Little Girls In Pretty Boxes

I've spent the last month or so reading through a lot of gymnastics literature. While a majority of it includes tables and graphs demonstrating biomechanics, scoring systems, or aesthetic instruction the most impactful book includes none of these. The book "Little Girls In Pretty Boxes" by Joan Ryan is a heartwrenching look into the horrors of the sports of gymnastics and figure skating. I have only read one other book that compares to how difficult it was to read this book (A Child Called It), yet this still tops the list. As a gymnastics coach and former competitor I have seen first hand the physical and emotional abuse that can be present in the sport. I have personally witnessed coaches verbally demeaning girls as young as seven, telling them that they are not good enough or that they are wimps and sissys for not working through the pain of injury. I have heard parents and students confide in me about coaches going against the warnings of doctors and their own bodies... yet never confront the coaches. I have seen gymnasts including myself quietly leave gyms because we can't deal with the coaches anymore without ever telling them off or letting them know the damage they cause. While I have never had a coach like Karolyi the similarities are haunting.
It was so refreshing to see Shawn Johnson compete. She enjoys her sport, she didn't drop out of school, she smiles. So many competitors gave up on life long ago. The sport is not for their enjoyment but for the enjoyment of their parents, coaches, and America. The empty looks on competitors faces and dissapointment at getting less than gold. I went to the level 5 state meet this fall. The meet is for girls ages 7-14+ most of who are 8 and 9 years old competeting for their second or third year. This student showed incredible talent with first place scores on vault and bars (9.925 on bars, the highest in the nation for her level this year), second place on beam, and sixth place on floor with a 9.050 (only .425 behind first). After the awards ceremony I heard her coach talking to her mom not about the incredible feet that she had obtained with a second all around score and the highest bars score I have ever seen in my life but about how they really need to work on her floor routine... no one is ever good enough.


Here are some of the excerpts from the book that I found most impactful:

"And after Julissa joined Karolyi's, she was always in pain, first from a stress fracture in her ankle, then shinsplints, then hamstring pulls and finally a sprained knee that would eventually drive her from Karolyi's for good. Karolyi, like a lion circling hobbled prey, picked on her, testing her survival isntincts. Either she would grow stronger from his abuse or she would quit. Karolyi needed to know which it would be. In or out. Black or white. Yes or no. He had no time for doubts, hesitations or fears... 'He called [Julissa] stupid all the time,' says Chelle. 'Then he didn't really pay much attention to her at all. She didn't get the hard-core coaching.' No mater what ugly words the coaches threw at her, Julissa didn't fight back. Few do. A gymnast at the elite level learns to stand still--mouth closed, eyes blank--and weather her coache's storms. A gymnast is seen and not heard. Even when she's in pain, she says nothing until she can no longer work. Nadia Comaneci once cut her hand on the plastic-and-foam hand guards the gymnasts wear to perform ont eh uneven bars, and by the time she told anyone, she had blood poisoning up her arm. Even when she's scared, the gymnats says nothing. Especially when she's scared. 'Chickening out' before a trick is an unforgivable sin." ~ Julissa died competing a vault that she was never confident on that her coach insisted she perform.

"Parents have always lived through their children to some extent, but these live in fear their daughters will be expelled form the gym, so they say nothing when coaches belittle their children or push them too hard. 'We should as parents be able to make sure they're treated porperly, I guess, but everybody's afraid to do it,' says another Karolui mother, Chris Fortsen. 'I guess I wasn't a very good mother, because I just kind of took it.'"

"Few parents learn from those who have gone before; the girls' careers are too short. By the time parents realize their mistakes, their daughters have retired, the parents themselves have moved on and new parents have come in to play out the same old script. 'I would never do it again,' says Laura Irvin, mother of another Karolyi gymnast. 'When my daughter said she'd never let her own daughter do gymnastics, I felt like a failure. All we wanted was a perfect life for her.'"

"Of the two hundred or so gymnasts who compete on the elite level every year, only twenty make the national team. Only six compete in the Olympics. A gymnast's elite career usually lasts five or six years, generally from age twelve to age eighteen. Some go on to college gymnastics, a more forgiving environment. Others walk out of the gym and never return. How many leave because of injuries or eating disorders? No one keeps a tally. But at the highest level few quit simply because they have lost interest, as a child might quit violin lessons. 'Gymnasts don't so much retire as expire.'"

"Two cherished American values came crashing against each other in the debate over Karolyi: the protection of our children versus our will to win. 'We have to figure out what our goals are,' says Olympic medalist Bart Conner, who considers many of Karolyi's detractors hypocrites. 'If we want a team that looks nice in their uniforms, that isn't under all this stress, that isn't playing with pain, that isn't risking injury, then we're not going to win.'"

"When [Debi Thomas] botched a combination of triple jumps fifteen seconds into the four-minute program--she hadn't middsed a jump in practice all week--she gave up. She couldn't do what she had come to do, which was skate the best performance of her life and win the gold. She turned her triple jumps into doubles, her doubles into singles. She finished third, behind Witt and darkhorse Canadian Elizabeth Manley. In what should have been the crowing moment of a remarkable career--she did, after all, earn an Olympic medal--Thomas felt only horror and shame. 'It was like on of those tortures in Dante's Inferno. I just wanted to get it over with. I don't remember much of it. I've blocked a lot of the Olympics from my memory.'  Up on the victory stand, when she accepted her medal, she felt as if she had le down her coach, her family, America and all African Americans who looked at her as a role model."

"Tara Lipinksi and Jennie Thompson embody the unspoken imperative of elite figure skating and gymnastics: Keep them coming, and keep them young, small and more dazzling than the ones we already have. The national appetite for new stars is instatiable. Deep down, we know that our consumption and disposal of these young athletes are tantamount to child exploitation and, in too many cases, child abuse. But we rarely ask what becomes of them when they disappear from view. We don't want to see them parade past us with their broken bodies and mangled spirits, because then we would have to change forever the way we look at our Olympic darlings. They are the pink ballerinas inside a child's jewelry box, always perectly positioned, perfectly coiffed. They spin on demand without complaint. When one breaks, another pops up from the next box. To close the lid is to close down that part of our sould that still wants to believe in beautiful princesses and happy endings."


Someday I want to have my own gym where I can coach a competitive team that is based on fun. I don't care how old they are or how well they do as long as they try their hardest. Some coaches say that to work less than nine hours a week for level 5 (8 and 9 year olds) is insufficient. I say give them a life and make your coaching more effective.

A Fresh Christmas

Things have been a little rocky recently. It seems like one thing after another. Fortunately school is almost done for everyone in our house which will make things a bit more pleasant and I must say its nice to be able to choose what I'm doing for Christmas. I set up the tree at mom and dad's on Sunday and then brought all of my ornaments home (except for my box person, he'll come home after Christmas). We decided not to really do presents for our house. I bought myself something I would have normally asked my family to get me for Christmas and didn't have to feel guilty about it. And I won't have to wait until I open it on Christmas to use it... although I have to wait anyway because Lamar's Xbox is still in the hospital. We have a nice tree with lots of nutcrackers, gingerbreads, and ballerinas. And I can just sit here and relax on the couch. One more final, three more days of work, and a house (my own) in desperate need of some cleaning. I'm pretty happy right now.

It's been a while

This is the first time that I have been really able to sit down and feel like I don't have a massive list of things that still need to be done (not that I don't have a page long list, but they can wait). This summer has been a long and busy time. I haven't really stopped "doing" since mid June: Summer gymnastics schedule, Ashram, Big Bear, school, and moving, among others. I guess you could say it has been a hard summer (and when I say summer I refer to June-September). I love the summer schedule for gymnastics all day the first part of the week and then super long weekends... which I managed to fill with preparing for the rest of my summer. Ashram as always was incredibly rewarding... but also frustrating to struggle with being in leadership and trying to make things work out in such a short time frame and being disappointing that some people I really wanted there couldn't be there for the week. Big Bear was hard... I love the ministry that we do there and I love the kids but it was the most frustrating summer yet. Maybe the nature of my job and the relationships just finally caught up with me but I understand why people say they'll never do staff again at other camps and I never thought I'd feel that way about Big Bear. I know I took on more responsibility than my job called for (a bad habit of mine) but the negativity and all of things that fell through the cracks just took their toll. The day after we got back from Big Bear I started into school with 6 units to complete in 4 weeks in order to keep my scholarship... a success at the price of isolating myself for the majority of those 4 weeks just to keep up on homework. And now I have bought and moved into a new house. There have been a lot of things that have needed to be done: unpacking, cleaning, moving stuff from my parents house, more cleaning, more unpacking... and still a lot to be done.

I don't say any of this for sympathy or to say that my summer was horrible, it wasn't horrible, just hard. I say this because I don't know how else to explain what "now" is like. As much as this summer was hard, now is the opposite. Yes, there are still things to be done (though they are getting fewer), but since I got back after camp I have wanted to be home, not so that I could have a break and not do things, but to be with people. A lot of my hobbies have fallen by the wayside. I've let go of all of my old computer games (though I've picked up a new facebook one), I spend less than an hour on the computer a day (school included), I find myself cycling less often, I don't make late night runs to Winco for candy, the lack of "things to go do" in Modesto isn't a problem, and I don't tense up the minute I walk in the door. No more late night depression, no more necessity for movement and activity, and no more cleverly disguised avoidance techniques.

Looking back at this summer now, I can see that really it was just a continuation of what I'd been living. It really isn't that the summer was different than during that year, it was that it was the same. Summers for me have generally let me get away from everything. I literally cried every year I left the Ashram until I was 18. I cried when I came home from Junior High and High School camp, partially because I was leaving, but also because I was going home. This summer there was no getting away.

But I don't have to worry about that anymore.

I am happy here.

While I am still trying to get a handle on school, sleep, and all of that, I am enjoying life. I have felt peaceful more often in the midst of the chaos of the last three weeks than I have felt in a long time. I enjoy sitting at the table or on the couch, eating meals together, and all of the rest. I enjoy life.

So True, Ain't It?

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I've done it. I've gotten in over my head. I've bought the book by Peter Boxall and am determined not only to finish all of the books that aren't on this list that I want to read (Such as 51 more Jules Verne books to go!) but read all of these as well!