Men’s gymnastics teams struggling to survive

NCAA programs have fed American Olympic squads

The death of a 117-year-old program, one that captured championships and produced Olympians, ended with a gasp. And then a vote.

The fact the former did not alter the outcome of the latter offered a stark glimpse into the steadily eroding support for men’s gymnastics at the NCAA level, one that will eventually have a ripple effect up and down the food chain for a sport struggling for relevance inside the U.S. Olympic movement.

That gasp. John Roethlisberger could hear it during a University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting last fall. At one point someone asked how much money the school’s athletic department would save by approving the proposal to cut men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor track and field, a move athletic director Mark Coyle called necessary to help offset a $45 million to $65 million deficit due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The answer? $1.6 million. Or just more than 1% of the athletic department’s $123 million budget.

“Everyone was appalled,” said Roethlisberger, a three-time Olympian and a three-time NCAA champion for the Golden Gophers. “It didn’t make a lot of sense. … (We hoped) maybe we can reconcile and at least save our sport and they were like, ‘Nope, let’s vote.’”

And they did. Seven in favor of cutting men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor track at the end of the 2020-21 academic year. Five against.

Minnesota’s decision came two months after Iowa announced it was dropping men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s and women’s swimming and diving. Again, administrators pointed to the long-term financial impact of the pandemic.

The losses will leave just five men’s gymnastics programs in the Big Ten and just 11 at the Division I level overall, not including the three service academies. And it leaves the USA Gymnastics men’s program in the precarious position of trying to reclaim a spot among the world’s elite while dealing with a diminishing talent base.

There are 11,000 boys or men enrolled in USA Gymnastics, down from over 13,000 in 2007. With only 6.3 scholarships available per school at Division I, opportunities to compete and have at least a portion of their college education paid for are becoming more and more scarce.

Unlike women’s gymnastics in the United States, where athletes typically peak in their late teens before moving on or being pushed aside by the next wave, most male gymnasts don’t hit their prime until their mid-20s, making the NCAA level the perfect feeder system.

For decades, USA Gymnastics has stuffed its Olympic team with NCAA veterans. Gymnasts that competed in college or trained alongside collegians have accounted for nearly 75% (26 of 36) of the U.S. Olympic spots (alternates included) this millennium.

It will almost certainly be the case again when the 2021 team is announced this summer, a group likely led by NCAA champion and U.S. national champions Sam Mikulak and Yul Moldauer.

It’s a group Shane Wiskus plans to be a part of, one of the reasons he left Minnesota last fall for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. It was a move he felt necessary to give him the best chance at making it to Tokyo. It was also a matter of survival. The USOPTC will be around in a year. The Minnesota program will not, at least not at the Division I level.

“(Support at the NCAA level) is definitely dwindling and I fear that if this isn’t a wake-up call and if this doesn’t get some real change to happen within NCAA then I fear that more programs could be cut and NCAA gymnastics could go extinct,” said Wiskus, a senior who tied for the Big Ten all-around title last week.

Wiskus is lucky in that he had options. Things are far murkier for teammate Mike Moran. A junior from Morristown, New Jersey, Moran admits there were people within his inner circle who discouraged him from competing collegiately because they viewed his chosen sport as a “dying entity.”

Which makes the pain of its end all the more acute. Moran is a long shot at best to make the 2021 Olympic team, but his passion and dedication are an important part of the recipe it takes for Olympic programs to thrive.

“USA Gymnastics looks at the NCAA like the NFL looks at college football,” Roethlisberger said. “Each team is like a miniOlympic training center. When all that goes away, you have two coaches at USOTC that can carry 15 guys. Look at what that is going to do to your feeder pool.”