Freitas floors competition
Long gymnastics road leads to nationals, Iowa
Right before Jonathan Freitas took the floor at May’s Junior Olympic National Men’s Gymnastics Championships, his father, Dustin, took him aside.
“He said, ‘I don’t care what you do,’ ” the recent Bishop Stang graduate recalled. “‘Just by getting here you finally did what you wanted to do.’ ”
Freitas isn’t a big name from one of the powerhouse gyms in Massachusetts. His training time has been hurt by two years of shoulder injuries and helping his family’s gymnastics club get off the ground. Because of all that, he didn’t expect to make those championships in Reno, Nev., the highest event of the year for men’s gymnasts on the three competitive levels closest to Olympic-level. He especially wasn’t expected to get an athletic scholarship to compete for the University of Iowa, a Big Ten stalwart in the sport.
But throughout his gymnastics career, Freitas has defied expectations.
He was the 14th out of 15 regional qualifiers for the National Championships. At those National Championships he scored a 12.9 on his specialty, floor exercise, completing a double-twisting double somersault known as a “double double,” and was third in his session and 14th overall on the event.
With that goal achieved, he’s preparing at his family’s gym in New Bedford to begin in the fall at Iowa, where he will balance competing for the Hawkeyes with enrollment in their Army ROTC.
The odds were stacked against Freitas’ gymnastics career. One of six children in a military family, he was brought to the gym by his mother, Billie, when he was 3. She was teaching recreational gymnastics on their base in Missouri, and like many gymnasts, he was a kid with just a little too much energy.
“I was a rambunctious kid, so she brought me with her,” Freitas said.
When one of his sisters tried out for competitive gymnastics teams, a 6-yearold Freitas tagged along. A coach saw his potential and invited him to join their boys competitive team.
Just as he started the competitive circuit, the Army sent the Freitas family to Hawaii. Soon after their move, the elder Freitas deployed to Iraq. That set of circumstances solidified gymnastics’ place in the younger Freitas’ life, helping him find consistency in a life in which the turmoil of missing his father and moving around the country was taking hold.
“That’s when gymnastics really kicked in,” Freitas said. “Hawaii was definitely the start. I had a coach there, David Carter, who was one of the most inspirational people to me.”
Dustin returned, and the Army sent the family packing once again. They traded sunshine for snow, moving to Fort Drum, N.Y. If Jonathan and his sisters wanted to continue competing, he would have to make an hour and a half drive back and forth to the gym. They had come this far, especially Jonathan, who was advancing quickly through Junior Olympic levels, so his parents started making the daily trips.
Then Dustin was deployed to Afghanistan. The commute to the gym became difficult with just one parent at home, so Freitas had to drop out. He thought his gymnastics career might be over.
His sisters found that the local YMCA had gymnastics, but that originally wasn’t an option for Freitas.
“They only had girls gymnastics,” he said. “So we asked them if they would consider getting some boys equipment.”
Men’s gymnastics has six events in comparison with the four on the women’s side, three of which require different equipment sets than women’s events. Until they got equipment for Freitas, he trained on what he could. Eventually the pommels, rings and parallel bars came in, and after a year, so did Dad. Dustin started coaching Jonathan, and he eventually won two YMCA national championships.
In 2015, after 20 years in the Army, Dustin brought his family back to his hometown of New Bedford. A relative had an open floor available in a warehouse, and Dustin and Billie opened a gymnastics club, All Ranks Academy, as their post-military pursuit. Jonathan and one of his sisters jumped in to coach.
“The first week we opened, no one came,” Freitas recalled. “The gym was empty. Slowly we started building. More people enrolled. We saved up enough money to run radio ads. It was a difficult task. I would go to school and then straight to the gym, where I worked and then found time to train myself.”
Money was low for a while, but now the gym is thriving. They moved into their own building, and they have competitive teams. Freitas helps out while recovering from his pesky shoulder injuries and training for Iowa. He uses his improbable national championship run to inspire him.
“I went out and had fun and put out that big score on floor exercise,” Freitas said. “It wasn’t something that I thought would happen.”