Despite abuse scandal, ‘gymnastics isn’t going away’
Athletes, coaches at meet here express love for the sport, hope for safe future
During any given week, as many as 20,000 boys and girls, young men and women, will play, train, practice and compete on bars and balance beam, vault, floor or pommel horse, at more than 50 gymnastics clubs across Greater Houston.
More than 3,500, plus a like number of parents, siblings and friends, spent this weekend at the annual Houston National Invitational meet at NRG Center, reflecting the degree to which gymnasts and gymnastics endure even as USA Gymnastics twists slowly in the wind.
Three days of competition featured the usual soundtrack of a day at the gym, a mixture of music, cheers and the sounds of feet and hands slapping padded floors and springy vault runways — almost enough to make one think all is well.
It’s not, of course. USA Gymnastics is without a board of directors, the subject of investigations stretching from Texas to Washington, D.C., that stem not only from the sexual abuse of athletes by disgraced doctor Larry Nassar but also an organizational culture that allowed Nassar to thrive.
Arguably its best athlete, four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles of
Spring, back in full-time training at her family’s Montgomery County gym, noted tartly this weekend on Twitter, “FYI we (us ladies) don’t stop working hard just because our organization is falling apart.”
The collapse hasn’t taken any days off of late. Friday, as the first group of gymnasts arrived at NRG Center, plans were announced for an independent investigation of the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, and one of the sport’s most famous coaches, Valeri Liukin, resigned as women’s national team coordinator.
Saturday, as beginners, Olympic hopefuls and two Olympians took the floor in Houston, the New York Times reported that at least 40 gymnasts were molested by Nassar under the guise of medical care during the year that the FBI investigated him.
‘A safe place’
Yet every day athletes like Sam Mikulak, the twotime Olympian and fourtime national champion who competed here this weekend, and coaches like Bill Foster of Houston, who has spent 51 years in the sport and trained 10 male gymnasts who went on to the Olympics or world championships, continue to work, practice and teach.
“I love gymnastics,” Mikulak, 25, of Newport Beach, Calif., said. “Gymnastics isn’t going away. I come to meets and watch everything. Part of my motto is to inspire a generation. I see these young guys and hope they aspire to beat me someday.”
Foster, who now teaches at Texas Star Gymnastics in Tomball, brought three young gymnasts to the Houston National Invitational. All did their best. All enjoyed themselves. None left with a medal.
That’s not a problem for Foster, who suspects the pursuit of gold may be at the root of the contagion that enabled Nassar to lurk within the sport for more than a decade.
“Somewhere along the line, our federation came up with the idea that the only thing that mattered was medals and nothing else,” he said. “I’ve coached hundreds of kids who have never made it, and the idea that they are not important infuriates me.
“All of these diseased adult types who can’t see past first place need to find something else to do. What is important is the kids, not the damned medals.”
Most if not all of the gymnasts at the Houston meet have a very different experience than the elites who were caught up in the Nassar scandal.
“My daughter is in such a safe place,” said Lori Koons, whose daughter trains at Pearland Elite Gymnastics. “At the upper levels, the parents are not allowed to be around. We are. My daughter still attends school. A lot of the elites are home-schooled. She trains 25 hours a week, but that’s not 40 hours. She has a normal life.”
As the public rallies around hundreds of women who were abused by Nassar, it, like Foster, also looks for a target to direct its anger beyond the disgraced doctor, who two weeks ago was sentenced by a judge in Michigan to 40 to 125 years in prison for criminal sexual conduct on top of a 60-year federal sentence for possession child pornography and still another pending sentence in Michigan.
Foster said gyms across the country are taking down USA Gymnastic signs. And even though there’s a far cry between elite and age group competitors and certainly between men’s and women’s gymnastics at the basic and elite levels, critics of former national team coordinator Martha Karolyi’s authoritarian, albeit successful, women’s regime paint all with the same broad brush while calling for USA Gymnastics to be decertified.
Calls for education
Robert Andrews, director of the Institute of Sports Performance in Houston, said that even if the federation remains, top to bottom changes will be required.
“The virus that came out of the national team system has infected other gyms — not all, but some,” Andrews said. “Starting at the top is fine and good, but if we don’t educate to the club level to coaches and athletes and families, it won’t work.”
1996 Olympic gold medalist Dominique Moceanu, a longtime critic of the Karolyi regime, said last week that the only current requirement for USA Gymnastics coaches is a fourhour online course.
“Let’s add a comprehensive training course for the coaches while we are fixing things,” Moceanu wrote on Twitter.
Andrews suggests a decentralized system of coaching checks and balances. Currently, he said, complaints go to the national office of USA Gymnastics in Indianapolis. He suggests regional offices, in association with the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
Calls have mounted in recent weeks for the U.S. Olympic Committee to decertify USA Gymnastics. While that would provide a sharp break from past excesses, it would create challenges, financial and otherwise, for elements of the sport that were not directly associated with Nassar.
Tom Meadows, who coaches at Cypress Academy of Gymnastics and is head coach of the national junior men’s team, was coaching the U.S. team at an international event in Katy two weeks ago at the height of outrage as more than 150 of Nassar’s victims gave impact statements during his sentencing hearing in Lansing, Mich.
“We’re juniors, and we were getting questions about all this,” he said. “Meanwhile, we’re out there for the love of the sport, trying to do the best for our athletes.
“That’s what we will continue doing. Who knows what will happen (with USA Gymnastics). There’s still a lot to come. Hopefully the best thing will be change and putting our athletes first.”
“Moving forward, when due process occurs and all the necessary changes are made, we will have a stronger organization on the other side,” said Kevin Mazeika, the former men’s national team coordinator and owner of two gyms, with a third under construction in Houston. “But first things first.”
‘Time to clean house’
While USA Gymnastics reorganizes with an interim board of directors, the sport continues on the grass-roots level. The Houston meet is one of the top privately sponsored meets in the country with $45,000 in prize money for professional gymnasts, and another major meet with 4,200 participants is scheduled next week in Las Vegas.
Changes in the sport should benefit not only young gymnasts who never make it to the elite level but also to those who wish to emulate the likes of seven-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina, who competed at the Houston meet this weekend at age 42, a marvel of endurance who has won two Olympic medals and 11 world championship medals on her résumé.
By Chusovitina’s side was her coach, Houston resident Svetlana Boginskaya, who was known as the “Belarusian Swan” while winning two Olympic gold medals and five world championship golds in the 1980s and ’90s.
“Time to clean the house, get in new people, and let’s start over with positive reinforcement,” Boginskaya said. “It will take time, but USA Gymnastics, or whatever it becomes, will be strong.”
“Somewhere along the line, our federation came up with the idea that the only thing that mattered was medals and nothing else. I’ve coached hundreds of kids who have never made it, and the idea that they are not important infuriates me.” Bill Foster, coach at Texas Star Gymnastics in Tomball