I quit my gymnastics job to be home with Livy this summer, and it was incredibly hard for me to leave. I'm sure every competent person feels that their workplace cannot get along without them when they leave (no matter how well they usually do get along), but I felt it doubly because I am taking the only bit of outside perspective away with me. I did not do gymnastics as a child, and I think that has given me some advantages, as well as the obvious disadvantages. I do not immediately think of the way I was taught a skill; I have an easier time breaking out of the traditions and finding new and better ways to teach. I am not attached to the reputation of our gym in the same way; as long as the girls are learning and having a good time, I am not too concerned whether people think the gym has gone down since the good old days. The best advantage for me, though, is that I came into gymnastics with the attitudes about sports that I picked up from basketball, softball, and martial arts. They are much healthier attitudes.
Here's the way other sports work: There are several different levels. There are kids who play just recreationally. There are kids who compete on school teams or private teams who work a bit harder. There are people who are going to do this professionally, or at least at the Olympics. Not in gymnastics. The attitude is that if you are not going to work really hard and strive to be the best, there is no point in even competing. The competition can't be just for fun. There are recreational gymnasts, and there are competitive gymnasts who are super good. There is no room for people in between. There are teams of mediocre gymnasts, of course, but then people say, "Why even compete?" It's ridiculous.
Then there is the body image problem. In order to be really good at gymnastics in the modern world, you have to be a man, or at least you have to starve yourself completely until you don't get your period and your ribs stick out. Most kids at the level I teach do not do this. But the coaches once did, cause they were good back in the glory days. There is an unspoken (usually) criticism in the gym of hips and breasts and any amount of fat. When the rumor gets around that someone is throwing up in the bathroom after lunch every day, I am the one of the few who thinks that is horrific and scary and a sign that the child needs help. It's not that the other coaches don't care; they just see that kind of thing as normal. Talk about being too fat is bantered around by the girls all the time. It kills me to hear a 12 year old with amazing muscles and lines say that she is just so fat, and she is never going to have another cookie. Of course, she does have another cookie sometime- the child is 12 - and then she hates herself for it. Perhaps this body crisis is happening in adolescent girls everywhere, but I think sports should make girls feel better about their bodies, not worse. In soccer, you have to be really fat before it harms your athletic performance and before it shows in your uniform, and even then, I don't think it would be said behind your back (by some of your coaches) that you are too fat for soccer. But in gymnastics, even the normal body changes of puberty ruin your performance, not to mention if you gain some fat, and if you gain any weight, start to grow mosquito bites for breasts or get a waist, everyone knows. Leotards display every tiny imperfection and sign of impeding adulthood.
I would like for there to be team gymnastics for girls in the middle, the ones who are talented, but not extremely. I would like them to compete and enjoy the thrill of a meet, just like girls in other sports do. I would like to take girls who can do the skills, but who are too old, too fat, too dainty looking, too flighty, too immature, just like every other sport does. I was able to bring a little bit of this philosophy into my workplace. I was the advocate for the teenager who wanted to start competing at a fairly low level (Why not? Does it matter if she goes much farther?). I was the one who insists that the girls are lovely and perfect when they complain about how fat and yucky they are. I am the one who thinks it is my fault when a child can't get a skill, not hers; I just need to find a different way to teach it. I hope I had a good effect on our gym because of my outsider's perspective on the sport, and I will miss trying to inject what I consider sanity into a sport that sometimes lacks it.
