Pickin' Things Up
With my cold getting better, I’m off to Livermore tomorrow to help coach the kids at JDR Gymnastics at the Gold Country Classic. For those of you that don’t know, the head coach of JDR Gymnastics, JD Reive, is also the assistant coach for the Stanford Men’s Gym Team. Because the competitive season for the younger kids and the college guys overlap, I try and help out whenever I can. I enjoy it though. It takes me back to the days when I was a little kid.
GCC
The cool thing about Gold Country is that there is a college session as well. During tomorrow night’s session, Stanford and Cal will go head-to-head in another Bay Area battle. The good thing about these meets is that the younger kids could get a glimpse of what NCAA gymnastics is all about. This is great considering the number of gymnasts and clubs across the country has been dwindling over the past couple of decades. Whatever to keep the popularity up right? I wonder what it would’ve been like to be doing gymnastics when practically every high school had a gym program (could anybody tell me about this)? That would’ve been awesome.
It was a pretty slow week for me especially with getting sick but I’m hoping to pick it back up starting this weekend. Plus the Japanese team is coming this Sunday to train for a couple days at Stanford before going across the bay to compete at the Pacific Coast Classic next weekend. A bunch of my friends are coming and I can’t wait to see them!
I caught a cold, too…
I’d like to know how the Japanese team is doing.
Please write about them.
Take care!
Sho,
I did, uh…gymnastics in the age of high school programs and very few if any private clubs. During this time, most all high schools had programs and some were very big and good. We had the dual meets, sectionals and state meets. Everyone did compulsory and optionals. At state, we did compulsories in the morning and optionals in the afternoon and our scores were combined for final awards. We tumbled on wrestling mats if we were lucky, otherwise it was on the floor of a basketball gym with a few throw mats. Equipment was not anywhere as amazing as they are now. We had wood bars that we oiled to keep them from drying up and breaking, though I got notoriety for breaking one! It was incredible. I actually did gym with my high school, excelling there and the private clubs were just coming in to being with YMCA and AAU programs. It was pretty awesome to earn a letter with my high school and be decorated as I was, but earning a medal was very rare because not many competitions rewarded them. I also did gym with the local YMCA and that gave me my first experience with private club competitions and individual type competition. I enjoyed both my experiences and have watched the sport become something so unbelievable. I am blessed to be a part of that time and to still be able to coach and be a part of the sport now. I can’t imagine where it will go from here. I feel like a living dinosaur of the sport…lol
Glad to hear you are getting along well with your recovery and your out of the gym, but part of gym experiences (coaching and judging…we all seem to get some taste of that part too)
Keep up the good work and the best thing I get from your updates is your enthusiasm! Oh to be young and able again! Enjoy your time of giving it all you can and never give up! Here in support of you, Sho!
hi tomoko,
sorry to hear about the cold. i think it’s the season for colds so take care!
and yes, i’ll be blogging while the japanese guys are here.
continue to check back in!
wow kimi. so interesting! so much stuff that i never knew about. just shows how much this sport has evolved. too bad about less clubs/schools across the country though.
hopefully things will change in the future!