Gymnastics Coaching.com

Georgia gymnasts go 197.20 … finally

Gymnastics Examiner predicted that some of the top teams would bust out 197+ team scores last weekend. Seems Blythe was 1 week early.

… Shayla Worley finally seemed to live up to expectations, scoring a 9.95 on floor, as did McCool. All the girls got above 9.8, including Hilary Mauro who, though not the best or consistent gym dog, seems to have been picking up a lot of others slack this season.

Grace Taylor got a 9.95 on beam …

Couch Gymnast – FINALLY…. THE DAWGS BITE BACK…..

Nice to see Shayla finally step up. She was called out by Aunt Joyce this week, and would have faced a lot more of that kind of heat if the National Champions had had another disappointing meet.

… “Tonight felt so amazing,” said senior Courtney McCool. “This is who we are. We are Georgia. Every week we can make history, and we have control of that. It’s just what kind of history we want to make, and this was the start of the history that we want everybody to remember for this team.” …

Gym Dogs Down Kentucky With Season-High 197.200

Charlie Tamayo at Winter Cup

Many have been waiting years for this. Former Cuban World Championships medalist Charlie Tamayo competed as a “guest”, scoring 13.100 on Floor (with problems) and 15.8 on vault. Tamayo defected to the U.S. during 2003 Worlds in Anaheim and is seeking U.S. citizenship.

From Don Eckert:

Charlie is coming off an injury and wasn’t able to train like he wanted but his talent is obvious and I would love to see him train the way that other have the privilege in this country because of their college/parent or help from USAG. I really believe he could help the USA team but has to prepare properly to do so.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

He certainly doesn’t look 100%. But I’m glad he finally competed in an American meet.

Charlie is a superb coach. Living now in San Diego, he’s available for camps and clinics.

Brooks leads prelims at Winter Cup

Winter Cup is a National Team selection meet.

Former Oklahoma standout Chris Brooks sits atop the leaderboard after Thursday’s preliminary round at the men’s Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas, Nev.
Brooks, 23, scored 88.3 to lead U.S. champion Jonathan Horton (86.5) and 2009 World team member Danell Leyva (86.1). Stanford junior Tim Gentry was fourth (85.6) followed by Jake Bateman of SCATS (85.35). …

read more on Gymnastics Examiner – Chris Brooks leading Winter Cup after preliminary round

I tried to follow live scoring on USA Gymnastics. But the Flash system used was frustrating and confusing. (Better are the results on PDF.)

Watching the live scoring page, it looked like Horton had won. (Jon stayed on Pommel, so I assumed he would win. Especially since Brooks sat on Pommels.)

Luckily, @StickItMedia was tweeting live results.

Media coverage seems lackluster, perhaps because it was a Thursday night competition. Any women’s college dual meet gets more attention.

Some (seemingly random) videos were posted on the USAG YouTube channel.

I’m waiting to see Cuban Charlie Tamayo’s vault (15.8) and U.S. acrotumbler Kalon Ludvigson’s 14.2 on floor.

The best news was from Andy Thornton:

… The thing that actually excited me the MOST about this competition was to see that there were 127 total gymnasts on roster! This has to be the biggest Winter Cup ever, and the first (I believe) to require THREE preliminary sessions. And in an age when we can hardly find 15 healthy female elite gymnasts to go out and compete in a competition, that number is absolutely staggering. …

USA Men’s Gymnastics is Booming!

Norfolk Academy of Gymnastics

Why would a lawyer give up her career to open a new gym?

Find out in a brilliant documentary profile on a new club in Norwich, England, the Norfolk Academy of Gymnastics.

http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js

Congratulations to Head Coach Sara-Jane Inglis. Yours is an inspirational story.

What do you think of British Gymnastics TV?

These are by far the best promo videos I’ve seen produced by any National Sports Governing body. Thanks Gareth Finchett, Production Editor of BGTV.

British Gymnastics is really on the rise!

Dwight Normile on NCAA Gymnastics

Seems to me Women’s College gymnastics is getting more and more R-E-S-P-E-C-T from everyone these days.

It’s a great program. Check out these impressive stats:

… Utah drew 15,552, the largest crowd in NCAA gymnastics history, to its Jan. 22 dual meet against Georgia, which it won, 196.550-196.500. The following week the Utes defeated Washington on the road in front of 1,851. I asked Utah coach Greg Marsden if his team ever experiences a motivational letdown on the road when there is a sparse crowd.

“To be honest, that can be a problem at times,” he said. “We have to work hard to create our own energy. At home, the crowd does that for us.”

For the record, Utah’s 15,552 eclipsed its own single-meet record of 15,447 against BYU, March 28, 2008. Perhaps even more impressive is that of all women’s NCAA sports, Utah ranked second in home attendance in 2008-09 to Tennessee basketball, 13,999-13,861. Alabama gymnastics was fourth (10,484), behind Connecticut basketball (10,529) …

Stretching Out: Georgia’s lows, Utah’s highs and much more

Nice to see such detailed coverage from International Gymnast online.

Abigail Adams – Beam

Gymnastike posts an NCAA Routine of the Week. It’s nice to see an East coast team getting some love.

… University of Maryland Junior Abigail Adams on beam in their home quad meet against West Virginia, Maryland, and Rutgers. With Abigail’s help, the unranked Terrapins upset #16 Denver in taking 2nd overall. Abigail was the beam champion of the meet with a 9.85 and their combined team score on beam of 48.800 was their highest team beam score of the year by more than .700.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/assets/portal/add_ons/mediaplayer-4.2/player.swf

Gymnastics Videos on Gymnastike

Shout out to David F. Pendrys for this one. He’s doing his best to bring more attention to College gymnastics in the Northeast on his site GymnasticsReport.net.

Kyle Shewfelt – speed skater?

Is the Olympic Floor champ switching to a new sport?

Kyle dons the most advanced skating suit in the world!

Only for the TV show hosted by comedian Rick Mercer.

… though Shewfelt vs Colbert would be a GREAT battle.

related post – Shewfelt interviewed by comedian Rick Mercer (2006)

LSU coach D-D Breaux not rude

UPDATE. The Couch Gymnast noted that the journalist dissed below was given an apology phone call from D-D.

It took a lot of class to pick up the phone.

==== original post:

#1 Alabama travels to LSU this weekend, a showdown between the two top ranked all-arounders:

LSU’s Susan Jackson vs Alabama’s Morgan Dennis. (I’d bet on Jackson.)

I laughed after reading this article on TideSports.com: LSU gymnastics coach D-D Breaux, quite possibly the rudest interviewee ever

I just got off the phone with LSU gymnastics coach D-D Breaux, and I’m speechless. I’ve never really encountered someone as combative and rude as she was from the start of the conversation. Here is what happened …

I laughed because I once had the chance to ask D-D a question at a press conference, and got a bit of a snarky answer.

On reflection, I realized that you must be one tough cookie to be a Head Coach in the S.E.C.

D-D does not suffer fool reporters gladly. She doesn’t have time.

Looking forward to this meet. I expect LSU will have their best competition of the season. They are due.

Warren Long gymnastics photos

1984 Olympic Vault finalist Warren Long posted some of his pics from the OLD, OLD days.

Some from his years on the Cal Berkeley team (hippy) and some from his long Canadian international career. He was one of the most popular gymnasts worldwide.