Category: safety

Simone’s Today interview

Simone Biles Speaks Out On Proposed USA Gymnastics Settlement, Tokyo, More

No gymnasts are satisfied with the USAG offer.

The Yurchenko double pike is training, not for competition. Not at this point.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

USA Jesolo team not going to Italy

A Jesolo team was named. But will not be going in case of expanded virus infection.

Instead, a competition will be organized for these teams at the National Team Training Center in Indianapolis April 3-5, 2020.

Senior
Sophia Butler of Houston, Texas/Discover Gymnastics Inc.
Kara Eaker of Grain Valley, Mo./GAGE
Shilese Jones of Westerville, Ohio/Future Gymnastics Academy*
Leanne Wong of Overland Park, Kan./GAGE

Junior
Love Birt of Camden, Del./First State Gymnastics*
Katelyn Jong of Allen, Texas/Metroplex
Kaliya Lincoln of Mountain House, Calif./Airborne Gymnastics
Katelyn Rosen of Boerne, Texas/Mavericks Gymnastics*

Sam Oldham interview

Sam Oldham won Bronze in Team at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The youngest member of the squad.

Very eloquent, in this interview Sam discusses the challenges he faced mentally and physically during his career.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

 

 

No Shame in my Game

College athletes speak.

Being able to talk helps. A support system helps.

An episode of depression is like an injury.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

As SCHOOL Gymnastics declined, Men’s NCAA declined

USA. 

Katherine Hasenauer Cornetta:

Many men’s gymnastics followers point to the impact of Title IX as providing a critical blow to the sport on the collegiate level.

However, an in-depth look at the history of gymnastics in education over the past 60 years shows that while Title IX is used as an excuse to eliminate collegiate teams, there were several elements that offered up men’s gymnastics to the chopping block.

It was a perfect storm of court cases involving risk, injury and liability in physical education classes and school sports and a change in media coverage. …

While balance beam, parallel bars, vault, trampoline, rope climb and more used to be regular gym class activities, around 1978, they start disappearing from the curriculum. …

When existing equipment broke, it was not replaced, but phased out. When new schools were built and gymnasiums were stocked, gymnastics equipment was not ordered. …

… A Look At How Liability Caused A Decline in Men’s Gymnastics

Click through to read the entire article.

I graduated High School in 1975. I had school Gymnastics club and competition in Elementary, Middle School, and High School. Each was fairly well equipped.

By 1985 (or so) all three of my schools had eliminated all but basic P.E. Gymnastics. They sold off the equipment by auction. Clubs bought the best of it.

“Be true to yourself.” – UCLA Pride Meet

Student athletes shouldn’t have to hide who they are.

Click PLAY or get a glimpse behind the scenes on Twitter.

The Pride Meet was Feb. 9th vs. #20 Arizona. 🏳️‍🌈

Break the Fall – a book review

Break the Fall by Jennifer Iacopelli was released Feb 18th.

I finished it in less than 24 hours.

That’s surprising since I’m decidedly NOT the target audience for Young Adult / Teen romance.

This novel is heavy on Gymnastics, light on the typical YA cliché teen crushes and rivalries.

Jennifer: For me, when writing sports fiction, the sport itself is what the plot will stem from, so it’s almost impossible for me to write a book about sports that doesn’t heavily include the competition, practices and training that would be a major part of any athlete’s life.

Often we’ll see books about an athlete that’s injured or an athlete that had to give up their sport as an exploration of their identity away from the thing they love, but that’s been done so much, I’m more interested in what it takes to strive to compete at the highest levels, to try to win and what happens when you do (or don’t).  …

And the Gymnastics is well informed.

I assumed Jennifer was an ex-gymnast or coach, but she’s actually a kick-butt librarian.  Her sports were tennis and softball.

Jennifer: “… what I worked on the most was making sure the gymnasts were portrayed as realistically as possible, in and out of the gym. …”

The American National Team Director is lead away in handcuffs, accused of tampering with drug test results. Later charged with sexual assault.

When the rest of the Federation supports him, the equivalent of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee suspends the equivalent of USAG and delivers the U.S. Olympic team to a new coach only weeks before the Tokyo Olympics.

That’s a good plot device.

Jennifer loosely based the new Olympic coach on Kim Zmeskal.

She was inspired to write a Gymnastics novel after following the Nassar / USAG scandal: “… people in a position of power abusing athletes or failing to protect athletes from abuse …”

The story starts at Olympic trials 2020. Ends on the last day of Apparatus Finals in Tokyo.

If you are wondering whether your gymnasts should read this book it does have a lot of profanity. And there is discussion of sexual abuse though none of that is graphic.

The audio version is available on Scribd and Audible.

Amazon

20+ NCAA Achilles ruptures so far

There are many every season.

It’s a BIG risk for older, powerful gymnasts.

Georgia freshman Amanda Cashman is out.

Alabama’s Griffin James likely out.