Coaching at Western!

Well I'll start by saying…I love it! After only a month and a half this experience has taught me so much about coaching a Division 1 gymnastics team. I am getting to know the girls a lot better and how I can help them individually, including when to give them a couple moments to themselves. Having 17 girls on a team means 17 different personalities (even the twins, Brynn and Lindsey, have their own quirks and idiosyncrasies) and ways of doing gymnastics. This was new to me.

Working with the Arkansas team last year was great because I knew all the returners so I only had to get to know the freshmen. Plus I had been a part of the program for four years so I knew the system and how things worked. As a student volunteer coach, Mark and Rene welcomed my input, but contributing in a coaching role rather than with my gymnastics was uncharted territory for me. For the most part I just listened to them and observed how they handled different situations so I could learn as much as possible from the opportunity they had given me. Thus confirming my interest in coaching college gymnastics.

In Austin, I was coaching at Capital Gymnastics where I was training. Every once and a while I'd help out the level 5s and 6s if a shift needed covering, but mostly I worked with the level 4s. They were a pretty entertaining group and I had a lot of fun working with them. There were definitely frustrating times when it took 3 explanations of an assignment because the first two times they weren't paying attention. But when you're working with 7-10 year olds, sometimes that's just the way it goes. It was a cool thing to help them learn a new skill and then watch their pure excitement as they made it by themselves for the first time - their kips on bars sticks out most in my mind.

I enjoyed working with the little ones and going back to the basics. Teaching proper fundamentals is THE most important part of gymnastics in my mind, because when you have the basics down, you can learn just about anything. My friend Sam Cortez, former teammate and now assistant coach at Arkansas, helped remind me of that. Growing up in New Jersey training at Northstars with Tony Gehman gave her her knowledge of proper technique and how to use it as a platform to learning more difficult skills.

Tom Farden, now at Utah, taught me the same thing. Tom was the drill king. He had a drill for anything you could imagine to remind the gymnast of the proper fundamental positions her body should be in and how that will transfer to the new skill being learned. Not only a master of physics, Tom is a ‘cause and effect’ coach rather than a 'post-skill results' coach. Instead of saying, "Try and stick that landing, don't give the extra step," he would say, "You did this in your hurdle, which caused this in your round-off and entry onto the vaulting table, thus creating this position off the table, resulting in the extra step.” Tom knew my love for the sport and saw my desire for acquiring as much knowledge about it as I could, so his coaching style taught me so much...he knew I would be a coach before I did.

When Dave’s offer came along I processed all the pros and cons I could think of if I moved, assessing everything that would change as a result. The biggest factors were my training, college coaching experience, and my happiness in life outside the gym – away from Scott. I talked with Scott a lot about what to do and he supported me one way or the other. Since we started dating we agreed that neither would get in the way of the other’s progress and success in their sport. So when he decided to move to Austin to run professionally, I had no other thought than for him to go where he’d become the best runner he could be and we’d make the distance work. And he felt the same about my move to Michigan if I knew that it would benefit my training in addition to beginning my career as a coach.

Dave was always the other half to my creative mind when it came to gym. During the summers we would have the best time…he would throw out every possible skill or combination he could think of and we’d get a laugh out of me trying it. One of our favorites was when I did wrong-way double fulls (off the rod floor) and wrong-way full-ins (off the tumble trak). I also did every type of vault family, including full onto the table back tuck off, and half on tuck front full off. Granted all of this was into the pit and just for fun, but it stimulated my thinking and I believe it partially influenced my decision to keep training post-college.

Getting back on the topic of coaching, Dave has been an amazing mentor. Having coached gymnastics for over 30 years, 20+ of them being college coaching, his banks of knowledge and resources are endless. It’s really cool to see what he has done with the team here. Before, all I saw was their jump in rankings, but now I get to see the day-to-day details and decisions he makes. As the saying goes, I’m learning something new every day.

Even though NCAA rules the allotted 20 hours per week for the athletes to train, including competition, as a coach, it is often more than a full-time job. Not only is there recruiting to keep up with, planning home meets including judging accommodations, and travel expenses for away meets, there is also the time spent discussing all thoughts, theories, goals, etc. regarding the team. Our coaching staff often converses about these topics…what we can improve and how to go about it, changing line-ups, ideas for upgrading or trying a new skill, or being smart about training to keep the girls healthy for the long competitive season.

This group of girls is really something special. With the staff’s passion, enthusiasm, and effort to give them as many tools as we can come up with, they see their hard work from pre-season paying off, the fun in not just winning, but in improving every day and seeing that being reflected in their scores. They are beginning to believe they’re capable of some really amazing things this season. I feel blessed and am so thankful for the opportunity Dave has given me to be a part of their growth – working through and learning from the failures to make the successes that much more meaningful.

We’re home for two straight weeks, hosting Bowling Green this Sunday, Jan. 29th and University of Illinois-Chicago the 5th of February. Two away meets will follow, where the team will travel to Eastern Michigan Feb. 11th and Illinois St. the 17th. I will unfortunately miss the Illinois St. meet because I’ll be down in Texas for the WOGA qualifier. I’m sad I won’t be at the meet but I’m excited to get back to competition myself!

Thanks for following my blogs, and stay tuned for an update of my own training!