Gymnastics Coaching.com

In the most recent edition of the Code of Points, on page 181:

Stroescu Silvia (ROU) Salto fwd stretched with 2 1/2 twist (900°)

Yet I saw a post by the always informative mandusky on Chalk Bucket stating that Stroescu never competed that skill. That it was Sabina Cojoca from Romania, instead.

Starting at about 3min:40 it’s shown in “4 different competitions including the Worlds”.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Or was it someone else who first competed this skill?

Sierra Sapunar in 1997? … In smaller meets.

And who was the first man to compete the skill?

Leave a comment if you know.

I won’t embed this crash from an amateur looking bunch of acrobats.

You must click through if you want to see an ugly, but comic, fall.

It’s posted on a Sports Gone Comedy site.

Cheer is NOT an official sport of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

… Sports sanctioned by the NCAA include basketball, baseball (men), softball (women), football (men), cross country, field hockey (women), bowling (women), golf, fencing (coeducational), lacrosse, soccer, gymnastics, rowing (women only), volleyball, ice hockey, water polo, rifle (coeducational), tennis, skiing (coeducational), track & field, swimming & diving, and wrestling (men’s). …

Wikipedia

Will Cheer ever be added?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

… According to the annual participation survey of the National Federation of State High School Associations, competitive cheering is one of the top 10 girls’ sports in this country. In 2002-03, 4,644 schools reported having competitive cheering squads, with 111,191 participants. It ranks 10th in terms of number of schools participating, and ninth in terms of the number of participants.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, an institution that granted cheerleading varsity status in 2005-06, the cheerleading squad is granted scholarships and athletic department support services while being held to the academic policies of the NCAA and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). …

Double A Zone – Room for cheerleading in intercollegiate athletics?

related post – Cheerleading an Olympic Sport?

Inspired by a song called Get Up by Superchick.

I’ve had the pulled muscles, the rips and the pain.
I couldn’t walk for a few days, felt like I got hit by a train.
I still tried.
My mother tried talking me out of it, said I was too old.
I got laughed at and felt the stares, they were all so cold.
I still tried.
The coaches wouldn’t spot me, they couldn’t handle my weight.
Everyone told me that I couldn’t do this sport, that I was too late.
I still tried.

But what happens now? I quit.
Now more flying. No more flips into the pit.
I do my stretches, my body protests screaming a loud no.
I keep going, my heart telling me to do so.
I show my mother my accomplishments, she hates it.
I feel like crying, I feel like ****.
I have no money and no support.
I’m not skinny and i’m not short.

Do I keep trying? My heart says yes, stay strong.
My body and everyone else says no.
Forget them, I’ll prove them all wrong.
I can do this and this I know.

I Think I’ll Keep On Trying.

Chalk Bucket Forum – Supergirl91 – Trying

Thanks Supergirl. Many can relate.

Coach, Judge and Baseball nut Jeff Macrae sends us this link:

The CrossFit Games are now on in Aromas California and there are some BEASTS of athletes there. The individual competition started today with the athletes performing 5 workouts today and the top 16 moving on to the finals tomorrow where they have to complete 3 more! It’s pretty intense and the competition itself has grown immensely as this is only the 3rd year for it. There is even talk of it being televised on VS. next year.

2009 Crossfit Games

Jeff gives a shout out to Megan MacLellan from PEI who is competing.

Rick McCharles will be mostly offline hiking in Europe.

Lawyer CLAY TRAVIS posted an important topic on Fanhouse.

He asks whether NCAA College athletes should be required to set their Facebook accounts to “private”. Or ban them outright as Kent State tried to do before reversing the decision after public outcry.

Virtually every college athlete in the country is on Facebook now. This makes sense, it’s hard not to be on Facebook if you’re under 35, impossible if you’re under 25. But Facebook has become a public relations minefield for major athletic programs across the country. Whether it’s players being kicked out of school for making a threat in their status message (Wake Forest), posting racist comments about the newly elected President (Texas), setting off an internet firestorm over whether or not you actually posted messages on another person’s wall (Georgia) or just having your idiotic responses to quizzes posted all over for others to enjoy (Michigan). This is just the tip of the Facebook iceberg, every program is in danger at every moment of every day. All of this attention and all of this danger raises an intriguing question: Is it time for athletic departments to ban their athletes from having social media profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and the like?

This week the University of Arizona took action to combat the dangers of Facebook, announcing that all of their athletes in every sport must set their profiles to private. Setting the profile to private means that only those people you select as friends can see your profile. Otherwise the profile remains visible to the entire network (generally your college). How serious is Arizona about the new policy? Athletes who don’t comply risk losing their scholarships if their online conduct fails to “reflect the high standards of honor and dignity” expected by the school. …

read the entire article – Time for Colleges to Ban Facebook?

As a blogger, I believe in free speach online.

But as a coach, Facebook worries me tremendously. It’s going to cause a lot of grief for a lot of kids for many years into the future.

I’d support any athletic program that requires privacy. Here’s Kristina Baskett’s private Facebook account, for example.

An outright ban of Facebook is going too far, IMHO.

Leave a comment if you have an opinion. There are some GREAT comments posted already.

Evian water is over priced and bad for the environment. It placed last in a blind taste test, behind NY City tap water.

No way would I ever buy a bottle.

But their series of Evian Roller Babies TV ads is amusing.

Click PLAY or watch one on YouTube.

Thanks Fred for first alerting me to them.

In Canada I had to watch episode 3 on YouTube (part 1). No doubt it will be taken down soon.

Watch it free online in the USA.

A new coach arrives at The Rock. Oddly he’s a Brit who seems to have moved to Romania to train. With the name Sasha Belov. The “James Bond version of Bela Karolyi“. And despite his youth, he retired 5yrs-ago.

Who writes this stuff?

Again there’s almost no gymnastics.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

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