Shooting a ball / A diving character

Does anyone have a good tutorial as to how to set up an object that’s shot upwards and then falls back down? Also, would that process be thet same in animating a character that’s diving head first?

Have a good look around at Interpolation (IPO) tutorials. What you need to do is basically create a curve that describes the vertical motion of your object over time and that’s precisely what IPO’s all about!