COACHING

If you know me then you know that I like to do physical tricks.  I have explored breakdancing, free-running, gymnastics, partner acrobatics, pilates, yoga, and capoeira.  All of these test the human body’s flexibility, balance, and strength.  So it was with this interest in mind that I contacted a local gymnastics facility in January when I saw a posting on craig’s list looking for a gymnastics instructor.  When I called the facility the director of the girl’s recreational gymnastics program, Lynne, my future boss, answered the phone.  I started off the conversation by proving my acrobatic credentials.  I mentioned the free-running club I had been involved with at Occidental.  I mentioned the break dancing sessions I attended.  I told her I could do a backflip, a backhandspring, a front punch.  After I had finished running through my biography she asked me one question, “ok, but can you teach little kids?  This job involves coaching 6-10 year old girls.  You have to be able to put on your nice voice and sweet-talk.  You have to control them in a loud and busy environment.  You have to run a safe and fun class.  Do you think you can handle that?” 

            “Oh yes, definitely, I love kids,” I responded.  I expressed enough confidence that Lynne gave me the job but in reality I had no experience with kids and no idea what I was getting myself into.  To be honest, I really just wanted to use their kick-ass trampoline and foam pit. 

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I knew my life had taken a torn for the weird when I learned how to tie up a girl’s hair into a ponytail using a rubber band.  The girls had to tie their hair up at the beginning of class, but some forgot or weren’t capable of doing it themselves.  I imposed the rule strictly, partially because it was a safety issue, but mainly because I was afraid of getting lectured by the head coach of the men’s team.  Luke kept a watchful eye over the entire gym and whenever I felt his gaze on me I became very nervous, trying my best to keep some modicum of control over my little brats. 

Coaching gymnastics is not an overly stressful job.  I got to wear sweatpants to work every day and as a teacher in the recreational department there was no expectation that I mold these kids into serious gymnasts.  I did, however, have to suffer quite a bit of abuse from my students.  As a girls gymnastics coach I was seriously physically and emotionally abused by my kids.  I am no match for 6,7, and 8 year old girls in terms of their combined physical strength or mental ingenuity.  Don’t get me wrong, I love kids (this is the disclaimer that every person who works with children uses before they proceed to detail all the ways that they hate little goobers) but dealing with a rambunctious crew of tumbling tots can get to be pretty intense. 

            One day my intermediate class was getting very rambunctious.  They were running around, screaming, jumping on equipment they weren’t supposed to be jumping on, and generally not paying attention.  I leaned over to one of the particularly wild ones and asked her, “could you just do me a favor and take it easy on me today please?”  She looked up at me, giving me an adorable smile that was missing several teeth, and said politely yet definitively, “no,” pulled her hand way back and delivered a full slap to my face. 

            Other students would jump on me and refuse to let go.  They would latch their arms and legs around my torso or my back or my legs and hang there like barnacles on a rock.  I would first try to coax them off with polite words, “I am not a jungle gym” I would say, or “there’s plenty of things to jump on in the gym, but I am not one of them.”  Then, getting more fearful as they increased their death grips I would try a more direct approach, “alright, you really need to let go now.”  Of course the child would simply laugh, delighting in my unease.

            Then there were the personal questions.  “Are you married?”  “Do you have a girlfriend?”  “How old are you?”  “Why do you have holes in your ears?”  At first I made the mistake of answering the questions truthfully, not realizing that this would simply lead to more follow up questions and future harassment. 

I watched the goings on of the gym with some curiosity when I worked there.  I was an outsider with a rare opportunity to see the operations of a tight-nit group of people.  Competitive gymnastics draws a core group of followers who spend so much time together that they begin to gather attributes similar to those of a cult.  I always found it funny that parents will pay the gym and the coaches thousands of dollars to train their kids in a sport which offers little or no opportunities for financial gain and is sure to give them some form of an eating disorder.  But there are believers in the sport and most of the coaches at the gym stay for decades to mold wave after wave of students into acrobatic machines.  One of the most interesting characters in the gym is Luke, the pony tail nazi.  Luke is solidly built with a body which leans towards the chunky side.  He is in good shape; he would often show up before his classes to practice basic tumbling and trampoline skills, but he had also relaxed his diet to include plenty of cookies and milk.  He sports a large bushy beard and long brown hair tied back in a ponytail.  But it is his voice that is the most intimidating thing about him.  It is loud and rumbling.   I remember typing in my attendance sheets in the office next to the gym after a class and hearing Luke berate a boy for goofing off as clearly as if he was standing right next to me. Luke is a strict coach who demands discipline and respect from his students.  His lectures were not only loud but long as well.  He would talk for minutes on end about one behavioral problem with a student, attacking the issue from every angle.  I think of him as the bear of the gym.  Once I found him taking a nap on a foam matt under the stationary rings. At first I thought he was a homeless person who had snuck into the gym to sleep of a hangover because of his hirsute appearance and dingy sweatpants.  Several times I saw him grab boys and put them in headlocks, wrestling with them in a carefree manner.  I never understood how he could do this without fear of sexual harassment lawsuits.  In another strange practice coach Luke and coach Bryan would sit on top of boy’s shoulders while they sat in a straddle in an attempt to get them to stretch out to their maximum potential.  This was just one of the many moments when I realized that gymnasts have a very strange obsession with molding their bodies into certain shapes, resulting in some rather hilarious stretches.  One of the other memorable incidents occured when I happened to glance over at the high beams and see the entire girls team standing side by side on the beams, engaging in deep, synchronized squats. 

The other boys team coach, Trent, is equally as strict and demanding as Luke but goes about managing his class in a completely different fashion.  Where Luke will loudly and publicly discipline a student, Trent will quietly and calmly line his entire class up and lecture them for 10 minutes straight.  Trent was so calm and collected in his disciplining techniques that I very rarely heard him speak.  He never had to raise his voice to keep control of his kids.  And, whereas Luke is a lapsed gymnast, Trent maintains his gymnastic form.  I once saw him casually bust out a set of perfect flares on a pommel horse as a demonstration for his class and he is flexible enough that he can sit in a straddle and put his chest to the ground.  The high point of Trent’s career was being part of a high bar act in cirque du soleil.  My first day of work Trent talked to me for about 30 minutes about his cirque days, even showing me a video of the act.  After that I never had another conversation with Trent of over a minute in length.

My last favorite character of the gym that I am going to mention here is teacher Torren.  He always cracked me up, mostly because of his sheer goodness and earnestness, which, at first, I though had to be an act.  Torren is the hardest working person I ever met.  He goes to high school and takes tons of AP courses, he trains hours a day for the team gymnastics, competing for the all-around title, and he coaches boys and girls classes at the gym as well.  I couldn’t believe his diligence until I found out that he is a mormon.  Then it all made perfect sense.  Of course he is incredibly productive, he never thinks about a beer at the end of the day or a coffee in the morning to wake him up.  The only thing I ever saw that kid consume was oatmeal.  And, the amazing thing is, that he seemed perfectly happy, content in his substance free tumbling and kid-filled world.  The gym is Torren’s true home.  He knows all the equipment, the foam blocks, the matts, where the dead spots on the spring floor are located.  When he moves through the gym he literally bounds about, as if his legs were two pogo sticks.  It’s Torren’s last year as a gymnast.  Then its off to BYU for a year where he will be the school mascot, flipping and juggling (yes he’s a double threat) as Cosmo the cougar, then on a mission for two years, back to BYU for another three, then off to physical therapist school for another three. Within those nine years I’m sure Torren will marry a nice, Mormon woman and have nice Mormon kids.  I always wondered if I should do the same thing Torren had done.  Pick a life path which commits a decade of your time to good causes and follow through with it.  This means that your life will have security, safety, and purpose.  Instead I decided to quit my gymnastics job, pack up my belongings, and head out on an open ended roadtrip that will involve camping, seeing friends, and various forms of cardiovascular exercise, not necessarily in that order.  So much for commitments.