Great success

(or, as Dom might say, delusions of grandeur?)

How do you take your gymnasts' success?

Though much of this blog details the less than glorious times, once in a while my ladies win. Kelsey and Brittany form the second place-third place punch in their age group. Alejandra wins beam. Maya places in the top three on vault. Christina, Laurel, and Grace sneak onto the podium in their Level 4 glory. Jamie places even on her bad days.

"It's all because of your coaching!" my mom says.

Thanks, Ma!

But I credit my own gymnastics successes to a team of coaches: Doug, who spotted me for back handsprings on beam even as my teammates packed up to go home and the owner shut off the lights; Jody, who had the gift of making the least graceful gymnasts look lovely; Andre, who taught front tumbling and mental empowerment; Matt, who said, "Why not?" whenever I asked him to spot me for random skills like front handspring step-out beam mounts; my first coaches, who drilled in the strength and flexibility that follow me still.

Yet who's up on that beam when the judges are watching? The one sweating, controlling anxiety, fighting to stay on? The gymnast.

So of course I'd love to pat myself on the back when one of the ladies runs up to the podium. But I must also salute Greg for his nitpicking analysis of her routine, John for his patience in helping her push past fear, and above all of us, the lady herself.

Spot On

I know the signs. She stands with her arms up. One toe pointed. Her hands drift back, then stop. Drift back and stop again.

Wait for it, wait for it...

"Can you spot me?" Maya stands on the beam for her fifth back walkover of the day.

In my day, I was a big fan of the "Just stand there and only spot me if I'm about to die, okay?" My girls aren't terribly different. Most of them become independent quickly, or ask for a few spots at the beginning of the workout and go forward from there. Of course, there are exceptions.

"You've already done four," I say.

"But I feel like I'm going to die!"

"You're not going to die."

"Please?"

The thing with Maya is that she can turn off the fear under pressure. At the meet, she'll go for the back walkover and make it. Some practices she connects back walkover to back walkover without a qualm. And other days are the "I'm going to die" days.

I'll be honest. Spotting makes me nervous. Really nervous. Not beam, so much. But vault does. I stack blocks next to the table so I can reach the girls. But there are so many ways their vaults can go wrong, so much potential to fly out of my hands. Tumbling, too. The older Level 4's ask for spots for back tucks, but their sets and flips are so inconsistent that in one turn, they flip at your shoulders, and in the next, their heads scrape the floor.

One day all of the girls tumbled together. Greg, John, and I supervised simultaneously. Greg's 6'3", John 6'0", and I come in at a whopping 5'0".

Natalie stood in the corner for her back tuck. Then she turned to me, ignoring my taller counterparts, and asked, "Can you spot me?"

I stepped in, but I needn't have. She flipped above my head.

A few months ago I kneeled next to the low beam as Maya prepared for her back handspring. Truth was, I'd never spotted a back handspring before on a beam of any height. But how much could go wrong on the low beam?

She lands. We both exhale. She goes again, and again, once slightly crooked. I put her back on the beam.

"You just saved my life! Thank you!" She meant it.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

If you can't remember that, how about your beam routine?

Generation 4.0 exhibits desireable traits: they pay attention, talk little, and work hard. Except their memories are like water to a duck. Nothing stays put.

"Roundoff from one knee," I say.

Colleen cocks her head, long ponytail sweeping over her face. "What's a roundoff?"

"You just did one."

Colleen doesn't believe me. Then the epiphany: "Oh." She does a cartwheel.

"Land with your feet together."

She nods. The ponytail waves like a flag. She does another cartwheel.

I look at the clock. Two hours to go.

The learning process for the beam routine is arduous. Larissa and Dana remember. Except there are a few parts they forget, and no matter how many times we review, they still forget. Holly's the most solid. It's hard to tell if Mariah has forgotten, or if she's just pausing every three seconds from fear. Colleen prances as she wishes, puckering her lips on the "fish pose." Nina and Allison look at me bashfully. They're lost.

Greg suggests that we designate each beam as a different part of the routine, and have them practice piecemeal. I support this idea. Except nobody besides the former three remembers those parts. Nor can they put the parts together for one cohesive routine. Then you've got Nina and Mariah scared to do handstands, Allison rolling her ankles and stubbing her toes constantly, Colleen lying on the beam pretending to swim, and Larissa and Dana already bored of the routine.

"All right, let's get a drink!" I call.

Of 8's and 9's

Just how do the girls handle their vacillating scores?

A little too well.

Kasey, bless her soul, shrugs off the 4.0's on bars. "Hey, I got a 4.5 this time!" she'll say. "I improved!" Amy's spent so much of her first Level 5 season falling on every event that there's no point in looking at the scores. Same for Natalie in Level 6. The older Level 4's seem immune to all scores good and bad, besides Alejandra, who proudly mentions her 9.45 on vault at last year's Team Cup whenever it's relevant.

On the one hand, more distress might serve as a sign of caring. Of motivation, will to improve. On the other hand, I appreciate their cheerfulness.

It's not easy to handle being judged. I just want to go out there and hit four for four and have fun is the canned response of elite gymnasts. But what more can you do? Some days you're at your best and you're rewarded. Other days, you're robbed. On your bad days, the scores tell it like it is. Other times, you get lucky.

Kathryn was so proud to get her kip. But all of her competition bar routines feature multiple pauses, poor form, and tiny, tiny swings. 6.0. She cried the first two meets when she saw the score. Then she came to the third with new resolve: "My mom said if I don't cry today, we can go to the mall."

At a recent meet, Maya fell off beam twice. She walked away nonchalantly. Only when her 7.5 was raised did she care. Hysterical tears ensued.

"Hasn't she missed practice for like the past month?" Greg said.

"Yep," I said.

"What does she expect?"

Exactly.

But it goes both ways. Kathryn scored an 8.375 on floor. During the awards, gymnasts stepped onto the podium with scores in the 9.0's. Then Kathryn's name was called. She ran up there, ahead of girls from the good teams, placing third or fourth. John, Greg, and I looked at each other. What?

Turned out somewhere between flashing the score and entering it into the computer, someone had accidentally changed the 8 to a 9. We knew. Kathryn's mom knew. But Kathryn didn't. She bounced back over to us with her ribbon. "I got a 9.375!" she exclaimed.

"Good job!" I high-fived her. She could keep her victory.

Generation 4.0

Now there's a new group in town, none of them much over four feet tall: the non-sanctioned Level 4's.

A Tale of Two Groups of Level 4's? Somewhat.

We keep the older, experienced Level 4's with the Level 5's. The youngins are fresh off of Level 3. "Non-sanctioned" means that their meets are non-threatening: their scores don't count for anything (some meets don't even have scores), no scores are raised, and at the end, "everyone's a winner."

Like their older counterparts, these Level 4's bring a certain level of sass (or, at least, entertainment). There's Colleen, whose attention is always on something other than gymnastics; Mariah, who cries over anything; Dana, a silent, tenacious child; Nina, who doesn't realize how good she is; Allison, always a step behind; Holly, wildly inflexible (why must this be a trend?!). And then there's Larissa.

We've all known a Larissa. The one who stands out. The one who learns quickly. The one who never seems to get tired. Larissa started gymnastics in September. She was the first girl in the group to get her roundoff back handspring. Now she has a cartwheel on high beam, a back walkover on low beam, and not-too-shabby attempts at kips. She's on the verge of surpassing Dana, the previous leader of the group. She's tiny, flexible, strong, and six years old.

I'm afraid to get too excited about Larissa's natural ability. Sure, she's excited about gymnastics now. She comes to every practice. While her teammates giggle, she stays focused. Give her one correction and she understands. But we've had these talents before: Maya, whose interest in gymnastics is inversely proportional to her mother's prodding; Jamie, who can't decide if she wants to be a real gymnast or a girl who does gymnastics; and another girl of Gen 4.0, who showed as much promise as Larissa but faded out.

We're waiting for the girl who will take the flame and run with it.

Selling the Drama: All that glitters

can be turned to gold.

"Why do I get such low scores on floor?" Kathryn says.

"Because it looks like you're falling asleep in your routine," I say.

"Ohhh."

I firmly believe that if the presentation is good, you can sell anything. Especially floor routines. I never had the most difficult tumbling. Occasionally I fell on my face or off the floor. But if there was one thing I could do without fail, it was to perform my routine with love, joy, and drama. Sharp arms! Head turns! Plunges to the floor! Sword fights! With toes always pointed and solid jumps and turns, I'd often beat the girls with the big tumbling passes. No coach taught me the art of presentation; I had watched enough gymnastics competitions on TV and on old videos to see how it was done (back in the days when gymnasts actually danced in their routines). I took all of it in and put it back out with spirit and gusto.

It is time for my girls to do the same.

And it will be no small task.

"We are going to add pizazz to our floor routines," I say in January, emphasizing the word in hopes that it sounds exciting.

They look back at me with faces of, Um, okay.

I've already learned that calling out, "Lift your chin!" and similar directions does not work when the girls are mid-routine, especially when 1. they're tired and/or 2. on the verge of forgetting the routine if their concentration lifts for an instant. So we go back to the beginning of the routine. I instruct them exactly when to lift their chins. How to tilt their heads. What their hands should do at each instant. Where their arms should be. Over the course of several practices, we make it through the entire routine and then review.

Of course, some of them forget. Repeatedly. None of them match the robotic precision of the top teams. But then again, I never did either. Kelsey and Jamie start pulling in the 9.0's. So do the Level 4's. Their chins are up, they hear the music, they're learning to pay attention.

Every rose has its thorn

(Or storm, as Francesca would say!)

That first meet blew last season away. Surely there was nowhere to go but up.

Until the next meet, of course.

This competition was a tremendous invitational, the kind in which sessions run all day and night, the awards ceremony takes almost as long as the competition, and you come to memorize the placement of every mat and chair in the gym, every hokey announcement by the meet director. Beforehand, I had the tremendous fortune of losing my voice to a combination of bronchitis and extreme Rock Band singing. I tried writing notes at practice. Didn't hep.

The Level 4's turned in lackluster performances. Christina and Laurel were decent but didn't score high. Grace and Alejandra weren't as sharp as usual. Chloe, a nervous twig of a child, competed as though the wind might knock her off the beam at any moment.

The Level 5's, in the next session, were just as uninspired. Kelsey pulled together an 8.1 on bars, but I don't think anyone broke a 9.0 on the other events. Oddly, they all managed to win a bunch of awards.

And the next day, with my voice at new levels of scratchy, the 6's (Maya and Natalie) bombed bars and beam like there was no tomorrow. Maya earned an award for vault and Natalie finished with one of those "every child's a winner" medals.

I wish I had put on a leotard and competed for all of them.

Gym Fathers

When I allude to parental complaints at the gym, it's almost unanimously the mothers. The girls' fathers surface at meets. They applaud, videotape, fall asleep during the awards (as Kasey's father once did).

The mothers push their girls. They scrutinize, watch through the window at the end of practice, ask questions, throw in their two cents as we politely smile. They say their daughters aren't good enough.

I got caught in the crossfire between Maya and her mother. It was one of Maya's good days. She'd just returned from gymnastics camp and worked out with motivation and focus.

"Want to see my giants?" Maya said to her mother. "I just need John to spot me."

"Spot you?" Maya's mother frowned.

"I only need a little spot--"

"I didn't pay all this money for you to go to camp so you could goof off and do giants with a spot." Maya's mother shakes her head. "We've been putting a lot of money into gymnastics since you were two. No more messing around. You're going to States this year. We need to get serious."

Maya qualified to States quite handily last season. But she had a championship game, or a music performance, or a dance recital, or some other conflict the same weeked. She says nothing now.

I wonder if they realize I'm still standing here.

Sometimes the fathers arrive at the gym to pick up their gymnasts. Kelsey had just learned a full-twisting front layout into the pit, and after practice she showed her father. "Shock" and "awe" would best describe the look on his face. "Whoa!" he said.

"That's all he would say on the drive home," Kelsey said at the next practice. "He was, like, amazed!"

Let's hear it for the dads!

Meet Season, Round Two

I don't know what to expect this first meet. The girls seem prepared. They're looking the way they probably should have last year: all their skills, though a bit choppy around the edges. It's just a small meet in November and none of the big teams are here.

But you never know.

For once, all of our gymnasts have the same session, and between the 4's, 5's, and 6's, we've taken up just about a whole squad. The first event: beam. I like seeing the girls start on this event, but unfortunately that means they'll end on bars. Nothing like ending your meet with a 4.0.

Kathryn's first up on beam. She's calmed her tendency to flail every part of her body as she jumps, or kicks, or walks. At practice, her mind's everywhere. But now her eyes stay on the beam. She moves calmly. Nails her cartwheel. Dismounts.

9.3.

Brittany next: 9.2. Jamie: 9.0. Alejandra later, for the Level 4 contingent: 9.25.

Is this my team??

..

Bars, of course, reminds me that much remains to improve. Jamie pulls off the team's highest for the day, a 7.95, with a messy routine. Several girls miss their long hang kips. A few errant squat-ons. But only Kasey, with her lack of kips, falls into the 4.0 club this meet.

We're rising.

Burning Out, Fading Away

As we approached Fall 2009, it was time to re-remember the routines. Back away from the new skills for the time being to polish the old.

We moved Natalie to Level 6 and Amy to Level 5. The other girls stayed put. I tried to make the transition back to routines fun. On beam, I had the girls do relays: one gymnast performed her routine on each of the high beams while the others waited in line, and if she fell, the next girl on line took her place  and continued the routine for her. The ultimate goal? Completing your routine without a fall. Simple, but the girls were excited.

In September, the blue moons defied nature: Kathryn and Brittany got their kips in the same week. I fully expected these kips to disappear. But alas, they remained! Now only Kasey and Tia needed their kips, and we'd have a real Level 5 team on our hands.

In the summer, Tia hit a plateau. Soon she slid down. Her two back handsprings on floor vanished. The kip she'd once been close to was miles from the bar. One day during warm-ups, I overheard her telling Kelsey that lacrosse was her favorite sport. Then she looked at me as though I would yell at her. Of course not--we all know how I feel about other sports. But gymnastics is not an easy sport when it's not your favorite, I thought.

To no one's surprise, Tia quit before the first meet. She came back several months later for an advanced class. She sprinted over to hug me, now several inches taller. When she grinned, new braces glinted. "It's not the same without your knowledge of pop music," I told her.

The Gymnast's Mistress: Other Activities

The first gym I attended did not support extracurriculars. I remember drama with an older teammate who was secretly playing softball. Such gyms require an intense focus on gymnastics. At others, the practice times simply aren't conducive to afterschool activities.

The second gym I went to, and stayed at, had no such restrictions. As long as you told the coaches when you had to miss practice, nobody minded.

So in middle school, I ran cross-country, played basketball, and competed for the gymnastics team. In eighth grade I went up to varsity gymnastics, which meant cross-country had to go, but now the spring season was free for lacrosse. I played one season of JV lacrosse in high school and then converted to winter and spring track. Ah, and we can't forget a minor role in the school production of South Pacific and a role with actual lines and a cool costume in Hamlet. Thanks to Beth, I brought such multitasking to my final semester of college, doubling as both gymnast and cheerleader.

There were weekends when I'd compete at a gymnastics meet in the morning and a track meet at night. During "tech week" of the school plays, when we were required to be in the auditorium from the last school bell to midnight, I practiced at the gym on Sundays during birthday parties.

It was all a matter of choice. I loved track, and it was especially alluring when I was frustrated in the gym. Senior year of high school, I considered dropping varsity gymnastics for cross-country. But I knew I wouldn't really do it. Those other sports and activities gave me fantastic experiences and stories, but I always preferred gymnastics. I knew what I wanted. So did my parents and so did my coaches.

So I support my gymnasts in their pursuits of lacrosse, school plays, trombone, dance, basketball, softball, what-have-you. The complication comes when they miss practice for weeks in a row. They come in three or four times a month. When their other activity winds down, they return to gymnastics in the lull and wonder why they can't do skills as well as they did before. Then their parents want to know why they're not progressing.

Is progress possible? Yes; I moved steadily through the USAG levels with my jam-packed middle and high school lives. I had a pretty sweet GPA, too. All this considered meant sleep often fell by the wayside. But I didn't enter the gym lightly. Sure, I laughed and had fun with my teammates. But I was always ready to work.

Can't Be Tamed

At least once a week, Kathryn runs to the radio and raises the volume. "This is my jam!" she declares.

Tia has very decisive opinions. An new Akon song plays and she shakes her head. "His last good song was 'Smack That.'"

"Gives You Hell" by the All-American Rejects comes on. "I'm not allowed to sing some of the words," announces Natalie, who then segues into her own, edited version: something nonsensical involving Spam.

Lady Gaga's "Love Game" and they all sing in unison, "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

But they don't know what the lyrics mean. Right?

"What does 'If You Seek Amy' mean?" Jamie asks out of the blue one day.

"I think Britney's looking for her friend Amy," I say. Behind Jamie, Tia starts grinning. I shoot her a death stare.

"Oh." Jamie's not convinced.

Recently Kathryn starts talking about the "Telephone" music video. "Hold on. You've seen that video?" I say.

"An edited version," she amends.

On the one hand, I can point to the pop music of my youth and say it was all about youthful love (Backstreet Boys, NSYNC) or just a bunch of nonsense (Hanson for the win!). Then again, how about Ms. Spears? Or Christina Aguilera with that "Genie In a Bottle" business? Maybe the radio's always pushed toward the risque.

John and I switch the station when a wildly inappropriate song plays. Sometimes we change the station to lite rock, which always elicits a grumbling. And once in a while, when nobody's paying attention, we turn the radio off.

Sleepless in Summer

Real gymnastics was one requirement of the sleepover. The girls wore their leotards and another coach and I led them through a variety of games and contests. Amy of the kip ended up getting her front tuck on floor, too. Then some pizza, some dessert. Already it was pushing 10:30 and I knew most of the girls went to bed much earlier. We turned on a movie. Surely that would lull them.

One by one, they snuck back into the gym. Soon the floor was overtaken by a full-fledged obstacle course (and a pretty crafty one, I must say), with some kind of dance-off taking place in the corner. The radio blasted its "club mix" of inappropriate songs. Tia made eye contact with me before shouting, "Don't trust a TOE!" along with one particular song (if you don't recognize the actual song, Google "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3).

At midnight, we tried to shut them down. We pulled mats onto the floor and immediately a fight broke out over who got to sleep on the tremendous resi mat. A few bruised feelings emerged. Then tensions flared between two factions: those who wanted to sleep and those who wanted to giggle all night. I sent the gigglers into the lobby, but even their whispers echoed into the gym. Some time around 3:30, even the most hardcore slumped into her sleeping bag.

At 7:30, I snapped on the lights, turned on the radio, and passed out bagels. "Good morning!" I called.

Groans and yawns. Fleetingly I wondered if the parents would complain that their children were wildly sleep-deprived. But hey, these kids would go to college someday and pull the same moves. They might as well learn now.

Summer training

Our summer schedule was rather erratic, mainly due to my graduate course schedule. Some mornings I'd come in at 8 and have to leave at 9. "But you just got here!" Amy and Laurel would exclaim as I ducked out.

Regardless of schedule, one question pervaded. Asked daily by Tia, it was always enough to send the other girls into a frenzy: "When are we having a gym sleepover?"

I tried to pass the buck. Told them to talk to my boss. But she sent the buck right back.

I don't know about you, but the prospect of spending a night with a clan of eight-to-twelve-year-old girls who tend to be hyper on the best of days was frightening. Exhausting just to imagine. And I could already see the fights in the foam pit, the masses bouncing on trampoline and tumble track, the hours creak by...

"When are we having a sleepover?" Tia asked, as usual.

"When one of you gets a kip," I said.

The acquisition of kips in the gym happened as frequently as new moons. There was a good chance that 1. it wouldn't happen, but 2. if it did, the event would be worth celebrating.

When I think of that summer, especially those one-hour segments I attended, I can only remember the kips. Sometimes John, Greg, and I took the girls to bars en masse and spotted them on every available bar. Kips for everyone. Millions of glides. More kips. Some close calls. Some almost-there's. But it wasn't until one day in August when Amy approached the bar before the other girls arrived at the apparatus. She jumped, swung her feet forward, shot them up to the bar, and arrived at the top. Then she did it again, and again.

"WE'RE HAVING A SLEEPOVER!" the girls cheered.

So we were.

Picking a Wedgie Near You

With all this talk of competition, I'd like to address an issue that all coaches, gymnasts, and spectators have experienced.

She's in the middle of competing her routine. She poses in time to the music, does each skill correctly. And then one hand drifts down. Nooo! you shout internally. You want to call out to her. You want to slap her hand away. But alas, you cannot do any of these things. So you and everyone else watch as her fingers pluck at where her leotard meets her butt. The judges immediately deduct one-tenth of a point.

Sure, I've never seen an elite gymnast do this on television. I'm pretty sure they would be excommunicated from their team for such a transgression. But wedgie-picking doesn't stop at young gymnasts. At one notorious college competition, I recall one of my teammates committing this offense not once but twice in her floor routine. It's a lapse of concentration. That is, if there was any concentration to begin with.

Our first meet featured numerous wedgie incidents. Thus I instituted the wedgie rule at practice: pick it during your routine, and you have to start over.

It always happened that Jamie, or Tia, or Christina (the three biggest offenders), would approach the corner before their final tumbling pass. As they caught their breaths, they tugged on their leotards. "Start over!" I called.

They would groan. Drop their heads. Sometimes dramatically fall to the floor. But nobody wanted an extra floor routine because of such a mindless mistake. Nobody wanted to repeat a fall-free beam routine when, just before their dismount, they'd forgotten.

Now, if you see my girls at a meet, you may see them fall numerous times. You may see their legs bend and arms flail. But you will no longer see them pick their wedgies.

From Level 4 to Level 5: Please Mind the Gap

What's with the plunge in scores from one level to another? Of course, if you're prepared, then chances are your scores won't be affected.

The differences:

Vault:
Level 4:
handstand, fall to flat back on a large mat

Level 5:
front handspring over the vault table (as my dear friend Danielle knows from experience, the transition to front handsprings is not always easy!)

Bars:
Level 4:
-the entire routine takes place on the low bar
-features the much-loathed mill circle
-no kips

Level 5:
-two kips
-half of the routine takes place on the high bar
-requires swinging
-no more mill circle!

Beam:
Here the differences aren't so vast. The choreography and skills are quite similar, with Level 5 requiring a cartwheel and higher standards for the skills brought over from the Level 4 routine.

Floor:
Level 4:
-the routine moves up and down in a straight line
-small amounts of dance
-roundoff back handspring

Level 5:
-the routine moves all around the floor
-much more choreography
-front handspring
-roundoff two back handsprings

Some gyms start their teams at Level 5. Based on the leaps between the two levels, I can see the rationale.

The Level 4's, Four Feet and Rising

The Level 5's and 6's could happily spend the rest of spring focusing on lacrosse, softball, dance recitals, frolicking at the beach. But the Level 4's still had work to do.

From those extra practices, I came to know the Level 4's: Amy, a very muscular girl who could beat up just about anyone in the gym, but instead feared everything; Alejandra, four feet tall, with no muscles but fabulous flexibility and dance; Christina, silent but a strong balance of strength and flexbility; Chloe, with a squeaky voice, big grin, and frighteningly bendy back; Laurel, wildly unflexible with perpetually bent knees, but very consistent, especially on bars; and Grace, who was in fact better than some of the Level 5's, but had the strange propensity to dart behind mats in the midst of some game in her mind.

Either the same age as or younger than the Level 5's, the 4's were easier to work with (besides when Grace refused to come out from behind the mats). They talked less and practiced without many interruptions. They were also needy: "Can you watch me? Can you watch me now? Can you watch me after her?"

Greg asked if I could come to their meets with him "to figure out that whole beam touch warm-up thing." At one of their earliest meets, I stood near the beam as Christina competed. About halfway through her routine came the tell-tale pause. The uncertain lift of her arms. Then she stood still, trying to remember. She looked at me. I looked back. She did a random skill then dismounted.

Next up, Amy. She saluted the judges. Then she turned to me. "Will you stand there for my dismount?"

Despite half-forgotten routines and talking to their coaches, the Level 4's scored far higher than the Level 5's, even when they stumbled, fell, or performed a bit sloppily. They especially racked up 9.0's on vault. Alejandra, not much taller than the mat she vaulted onto, pulled out a 9.45 at Team Cup.

But apparently the Level 5's had been successful in Level 4. They'd told me that Jamie had scored a 9.7 on floor. In Level 5, she was occasionally in the high 8.0's.

A disparity, indeed.

Floored

Floor: the event I most eagerly anticipated as a gymnast. I always hoped that it'd be our last rotation. It didn't matter if I'd done well on the other events or bombed them. With my love of dance and performing (oh, yeah, and tumbling), I could turn a good day into a great day. Sometimes, it sealed the deal: qualifying to States, making it to event finals at Nationals, giving us that League 3 victory! In the latter competition, my hair tie fell out during my first tumbling pass. Luckily, my hair was fairly short at the time. I also used to wear glasses with a really attractive athletic strap to keep them in place, and it helped with the hair. I pranced around like nothing had happened. And we were the champions.

If I accomplished anything that first season of coaching, it was acceptable leaps. Sure, most of them couldn't get their splits down. But I planned to work that dynamic flexibility for all it was worth. Kicks. Needle kicks. Kicks of all directions and creeds. Split jumps, on floor and tumble track. Leaps, leaps, leaps. And alas, it all came together: leaps that hit a full split.

::a divine light shines down::

While nobody particularly admires the compulsory floor and beam routines, the Level 5 floor routine really bothers me. Maybe it's the music choice. Or perhaps it's the silly prance steps. I mean, I'm all for prancing. But c'mon. Or maybe it was that, more than their beam routines, the girls had wide disparities in how the routine ought to be executed, and the re-teaching was more like an overhaul. It felt as if with all the time spent adjusting and figuring out the correct floor pattern and constantly trying to fix that inward half turn that confused them all, there was no time left to make the routine look, well, good. Polished.

At least Maya wasn't confused. In practice, she'd laze through her routine. But at the meet, she hit each pose crisply, attacked the tumbling, flew into the air for the back tuck.

For Jamie, tumbling came easily. As the warm-ups for floor wound down, I'd take her aside and guide her through the floor pattern, giving her points in the gym to look at during her routine. She remembered. Usually.

Unfortunately, Brittany's grace and lovely lines could not make up for her atrocious back extension roll nor the two slow back handsprings with bent legs. Those two massive flaws often plummeted her scores to the mid to low 8.0's.

Natalie, bless her soul, went for her floor routines with everything she had. Her legs were actually straight! Her chin thrown back, sometimes quite dramatically, her hands flicking to the music. Certainly, a girl after my own heart.

Kelsey nearly always turned in a clean routine with excellent tumbling. Kathryn and Kasey...not so much.

And then there was Tia, who broke her hand in the fall mid-back handspring. Though she's quite small, her back handsprings moved slowly, labored, and somedays she could barely do one, let alone two. As a result, her scores hovered in the 6.0's, sometimes a generous 7.0. By the end of the season, she had it back. At our final meet, she went through the routine in her standard mechanical way. Her leap pass was lovely. Her back walkover, not too shabby. She ran across the floor, did the two back handsprings, and the girls screamed with excitement. When the 8.0 went up, she started crying--from happiness.

And thus our first season came to a close.

In honor of doughnuts

Evidently Friday was "National Doughnut Day," and I had the honor of hearing this conversation:

Kelsey: "You should ask Anthony [another coach] to buy us doughnuts."
Marissa, age 5: "I don't want to ruin our friendship."

Flip the plank

Balance beam, you light up my life.

I loved beam as soon as I started gymnastics, quite possibly because I recognized that everyone else hated it. Four inches wide, four feet off the ground--what's not to love? (Plenty, apparently). This is not to say that I love everything about beam. I lived (and live, when I prance on it now) in fear of straddling the thing. I've had my share of wipe-outs, fear, and more wipe-outs. But I always came back for more.

I'm also aware that my gymnasts are not the biggest fans of the apparatus. But they deal. They have no choice. My beam methods are not ground-breaking, but they work more successfully than with the other events: make ____ repetitions of ______ skill. For some ladies, this task takes five minutes. For others, it takes the entire time we're on beam.

"All right, Tia," I said one day. "If you make your first beam routine, you can frolic in the pit."

Tia's eyes widened. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Her face sets. She moves through her beam routine without any flourishes, but few wobbles. Until the cartwheel. Her hands touch the beam. Her legs kick over her head. She lands. One leg flails up. Now everyone's watching. "GO, TIA!" someone calls.

And with a dramatic "NOOOOOOOO!" she falls to the ground.

But in competition, Tia's fierce. More often than not, she makes her entire routine. Same with Kathryn, Brittany, and Kasey. The routines may not be breathtaking and they sometimes wobble enough to equal the deductions for a fall, but they don't give in.

I remember those days. Level 8 State Championships, where I wobbled quite a few times but placed tenth on beam. NAIGC Nationals, ending my college career with a no-fall routine. The high school battle for the League 3 Championship, where the gym was absolutely silent and my teammates held hands during everyone's routines. My college coach would tell us that just staying on beam wasn't enough. But sometimes, it is.

Friction

On my best days as a gymnast, I liked uneven bars. We tolerated one another. On typical days, I wasn't a fan. Burning and ripping your hands from swinging around wooden bars, releasing one bar to catch the other without seeing where you're going, doing routine after routine until you're sure your hands will peel off--it just doesn't seem like a good idea. Then again, what really does in gymnastics?

My gymnasts unanimously love bars. Perhaps the playground monkey bars come to mind whenever we head to the apparatus. I brace myself.

At one competition, Kelsey missed her squat-on twice in a row, with John spotting her for the third. Natalie, competing directly after Kelsey, did her one better with three missed squat-ons. For the other ladies, there was the usual mess of 3.0's and 4.0's, followed by a judge saying to John, "These girls should be in Level 4."

Ouch.

Strategy #5: Bars every practice.

This did not lead to vast, immediate improvement. But it did rough up the girls' hands, ripping and callusing their palms--an important step toward being able to hang onto the bars for an extended period of time.

Victories were tiny last spring but very much needed. Kasey's mysteriously vanished squat-on reappeared. Tia and Kathryn grew bold enough to leap from the low to the high bar by themselves. Kelsey made her kip at the end of the season! And I stood on mats alongside the bars, spotting just about every skill in the routine. An excellent way to keep the old arm muscles in shape and the heart pumping.

But there's only so much one 5'0" girl can do. I'd give Kasey a spot for her kip on the high bar. Nineteen out of twenty times, she missed it and dangled from the bar. I attempted to push her back up. Legs kicked. Arms strained to pull.

"You're on your own, kid," I said.

Oh, to run full-speed at inanimate objects

At the regular practices, John and Greg took the girls to the "manly" events of uneven bars and vault, while I coached balance beam and floor.

John's one of the most patient coaches I've ever met. I've never heard him raise his voice. There's no hint of exasperation when he explains a correction to the same gymnast for the hundredth time. Once in awhile, I get a text from him at, say, 11 p.m. that reads, "I figured out what Kelsey's doing wrong in her kip." Such an even-keel can lead to the girls running wild, knowing he most likely won't punish them. But it's perfect for the girls like the injury-prone Brittany, who easily becomes frustrated and afraid.

Greg has done an excellent job of preparing the Level 4's, including on beam and floor, where he often demonstrates with his 6'3" frame. Like me, he's only patient up to a point. He also has the wonderful fortune of making some of the female judges blush. One day, this will work to our advantage.

But on the extra days, with John and Greg busy with the class kids, it was a little bit of me everywhere.

I'm not a huge fan of spotting front handsprings on vault. A little shove for Kelsey when she needs more power or Brittany when she's being a headcase--no problem. It was Tia.

I'd drop the vault table a few notches. I'd stand on mats next to the table to make me taller. And every time Tia started running toward me, I held my breath.

Tia plays lacrosse and she's quite good at any running exercise. She's also skilled when it comes to naming songs on the radio, quick to let us know her commentary and all the lyrics. None of the above helped with her front handspring. She sprinted, she hit the springboard, and nothing happened.

I heaved her body into the air. Her hands slowly rolled off the table, and her feet landed on the mats. Sometimes.

"I do it better with John!" she complained.

Yes, because John can do the whole vault for you. Though I really wished he wasn't in the middle of teaching five-year-olds to do forward rolls on the floor. "I'm trying to let you do more of it on your own," I said. Wishful thinking.

Alas, one day I really did attempt to let Tia try more of the vault on her own. Her hands touched the table, her feet arched over her head, she flipped over, hit her back on the end of the table, and rolled to the ground.

"DOES SHE NEED ICE?" yelled Kathryn. In a flash, she returned with an ice pack in hand. Tia placed it on her back, fighting tears.

Good job, Coach.

Stand and unfold yourself

Just who are you, Coach? What do you stand to gain?

The easy and common transition is from competitive gymnastics to coaching. I'm still competitive, still a perfectionist. I can't relate to the inability to straighten one's legs, or the lack of awareness that one's legs are in fact bent. Sure, sometimes we all need to be told something more than once. But every practice? On the same skills?

Maya's not the only one with a full schedule. Nearly all of them play at least one other sport or are in school plays and bands and the like. That was my life, too. Basketball, lacrosse, cross-country, varsity gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, a couple of plays. Except I always wanted to do gymnastics the most. When it came down to a performance of the school play or the county championship, I chose counties.

I strive for consistency in coaching. Some days, it's not easy. I come in ready to work and the girls goof around. I come in exhausted and they complain about everything. Sometimes, we're all on the same page.

On one of those "I'm exhausted and in no mood for nonsense" days, all of the Level 5's and 6's showed up to practice. I tried a new approach.

"Listen up, ladies." I gathered them around. "I am really tired today, and really cranky. If you annoy me, we'e going to have problems."

A couple grin.

"What are some things that annoy me?"

"Talking when you're talking!" one called.

"Running across the tumble track!" added another.

"How about we avoid those things?"

They nodded.

Maybe honesty does work!

..

My problem is that I tend to laugh. I crack jokes. I overhear snippets of conversations and I'm amused. I compliment the girl whose twentieth back walkover was less horrendous than the previous nineteen. The tough coach does not settle. I'm afraid that I might.

I only yell when I absolutely have to, and it stops the girls in their tracks. They know they've gone too far or not enough. They know that when I send one of them to the lobby, they had all better be on their best behavior. I've made a few cry. And then I felt terrible about it.

I give them specific numbers and let those numbers set the rules. Two minutes in an oversplit, and the team gets three warnings for people coming out of their splits. If three of you come out, we start all of the splits over. Slacking on your kicks, your push-ups, your handstands? Start over.

It's easier with the younger girls, the ones who love just gymnastics and nothing else. They don't know how to battle back yet. Maybe they won't want to. The older girls are coming closer to middle school and soon they'll be pulled everywhere, and not necessarily toward the gym. Is it worth the yelling and the prodding if they'll retire soon? Is it worth the pushing when they're in Level 5 and 6 and not the upper levels, and don't seem to have the drive to achieve those levels?

I don't believe in age as a factor. Many coaches do. If you're not cranking those big skills by eight, nine, ten years old, you're done. I began gymnastics at age eleven and powered through the levels. It can be done, if you want it enough.

But it's easy to say this in the gym. It's quite different at the competition, when your girls sneak into tenth and eleventh place (if at all) and the other gyms sweep the awards. Then I think that it's time to stop joking. I want to see my girls win. On the occasion that one places first or second, I'm delighted. But then again, I'm also happy for the girl who placed fourteenth.

What does victory mean? Does it validate me as a coach? Give our gym prestige? Is it a simple case of one gymnast having a better day than another? As gyms make most of their money from recreational classes and birthday parties, does it matter all that much how the girls perform on one day in one gym? Yes and no.

What do I stand to gain? I love gymnastics but I don't plan to become a full-time coach. John works at the gym full-time, but Greg's looking to another career, too. I want to keep coaching regardless of where and what position I find. But I don't know if it'll ever be about the glory for me.