YOUNG GYMNASTS AIM TO BE NEXT SIMONE
New wave of interest floods Biles family’s Spring gym after Olympic gold
If she is ever to win Olympic medals in gymnastics like Simone Biles, Flynn Jackson first must vanquish the noise monsters.
Flynn is 3 years old. She has taken introductory gymnastics classes at World Champions Centre in Spring since Biles’ parents opened the sparkling 52,000-square-foot facility in October. Her zeal and precocious abilities already justify a serious commitment to the sport.
Flynn deftly hangs upside down from a horizontal bar with her feet pressed against the underside, arms extended straight between her legs and blonde bun dangling above the mat. She scrunches a stuffed monkey between her chin and chest to keep good form while clenching the gymnastics rings. Deemed impressive for her age, Flynn still is as susceptible to distractions as any toddler. Her instructor repeatedly deploys a trick to get Flynn to listen and follow directions: She tells Flynn to press her finger to her lips.
“To keep the noise monsters in,” the instructor reminded Flynn at a lesson last week. “Don’t let them escape.”
As the summer neared, WCC increasingly attracted more locals like Flynn, whose family lives down the street and had gotten to meet Biles before her meteoric rise at the Olympics.
“I’m going to be a gymnast,” Flynn, practicing at home, told her
mother, Laura Jackson.
“She sees these other girls and she’s seen Simone practicing,” said Jackson, who pays $86 for a 55-minute class. “She wants to be like that.”
Flynn emblematizes a wave of youngsters, from ages 18 months to 19 years, joining WCC, with more expected to trickle in by the end of the year. WCC staff credit Biles’ winning five gymnastics medals, the most for a woman at a single summer Olympics, for bringing in more than 100 new members this month.
“It’s definitely not just the traditional Olympic bump,” said Kelly Talor, the pre-school director at WCC.
Talor used to receive emails occasionally inquiring about membership. Now she gets about 10 every day, most at night, after the Olympic broadcasts air. The demand required Talor to triple the schedule of fall season classes, some of which have amassed wait lists.
Adam Biles, the general manager and Biles’ brother, said a facility with 400 clients typically gains 200 to 250 newcomers because of the televised Olympics. He forecasts WCC will likely increase from its 919 members to 1,200 by the fall and 2,000 by the winter.
Tough odds
Employees estimate that now 90 percent of phone calls come from parents across the country wanting to know if WCC will make their kids the next Simone Biles.
“What is the percentage chance my child will win gold?” one out-of-state parent of a 3-year-old asked over the phone.
“Are you guys recruiting for the Olympics?” a parent of a toddler had asked.
Because only 1 to 2 percent of all gymnasts qualify for the junior or senior national gymnastics teams, according to Adam, he confronts naiveté when parents assume someone can guarantee to transform their children into Olympians.
“When I hear someone say, ‘Hey, can you turn my kid into a Simone?’ ” Adam said, letting the question linger before rolling his eyes and laughing.
Three front desk employees and Talor chuckled with similar bafflement over their own encounters with eager parents.
“People have these far-reaching expectations,” Adam said. “I’ll be the first one to say, Simone, so many times she wanted to quit and she was behind all of the other kids.”
Competition training requires severe dedication without the promise it will pay off. Biles eventually reached elite level but not because she was groomed to be a medalist. She drove herself to win gold, according to Adam. He said their parents merely gave her the financial support and homeschooling she needed so she could devote her life to gymnastics.
Still, if families want to make this rarified commitment, WCC offers some the chance. Monday, 28 full-time students at the facility’s accredited program started their school year. The youngest is beginning 4th grade education and the oldest 11th grade. WCC is considering 11 more candidates, Adam said.
Dreaming big
Despite the daunting odds and attempts to ground lofty dreams, WCC — with its schooling program, ample new equipment, 10,000 pounds of foam cubes in the pit, pro shop boasting hundreds of “Team Simone” shirts, life-size cutout of her beside the check-in desk and massive windows on two floors surrounding the gym for parents to observe all activity — is a shrine to gymnastics that seems to inspire everyone there inevitably to envision a child’s promising future.
Talor admired Flynn among a group of tykes ages 2 to 5.
“She’s a little bit more advanced than typical preschool,” Talor said. “At about this age is when we can evaluate them for our preteen program. You can tell even at 3 and 4 years old, their body type, their strength, their flexibility, their ability to follow directions and make connections.” Buoyant and brazen in her black velour leotard, Flynn stood out as the giddiest of the bunch, often wagging her tongue from the side of her mouth as she pursued exercise stations like a tornado. She cartwheeled across a mat, tumbled down a ramp, vaulted from a springboard and flailed her arms in a “wiggle dance” to loosen her muscles, giggling along the way. She also raced to the front of single-file lines, displaying her enthusiasm, and poked a boy in his chest several times, showing her supremacy.
Long road ahead
Other moments combatted delusions that these children were budding champions. The instructor hoisted one 2-year-old boy off the mat to prevent him from napping. A ponytailed girl stormed out of the class to seek her mother’s embrace. A boy in an orange dinosaur T-shirt scowled at a girl who reached the tumble ramp before him, so he vociferously protested the exercise.
“Do we need to hold hands?” one girl asked when the group assembled, nervously scanning her peers.
Even Flynn later turned petulant in the lobby. Despite her mom’s encouragement, Flynn, suddenly shy, refused to explain why she likes gymnastics.
“She gets hangry,” Jackson said, meaning angry from hunger.
She picked up Flynn to cajole her. When Jackson tried bribing Flynn with ice cream so she might say a few words, Flynn buried her face between her mom’s neck and shoulder.
“Let me give her a Goldfish and see if it helps,” Jackson said.
It did not. Flynn wanted to go home.
If a gold snack could not motivate her, she has a long way to go before a gold medal will.