On one side of Ford Center’s gymnasium, senior Dan Gill is hurtling down the blue spring floor, headed for a soaring Yurchenko vault with a double twist that will land him in the foam pit. Next to him, sophomore Jessica Louie is climbing toward the ceiling on a beanstalk of a rope while a cluster of gymnasts yell “You’ve got it!” And several yards away, sophomore Natalie Foley is polishing a routine on the uneven bars that includes a Shushanova—a full, twisting Tkachev release that few women attempt at the collegiate level.
For the 13 women and 12 men of Stanford’s gymnastic squads, it’s just another workaday practice as they prepare for their winter meets and beyond. “This year we should definitely qualify for the Super Six and be able to contend for the national championship,” says women’s coach Kristen Smyth. And men’s coach Thom Glielmi is looking at both the NCAAs and the Olympic trials in late June, when a couple of his athletes could qualify for the Summer Games.
Smyth and Glielmi are both in their third season on the Farm, and their easy working relationship is reflected in the way the two teams support each other. The athletes share a canny sixth sense that can bring the twirling, bouncing, leaping sideshows to a standstill whenever a gymnast is attempting a new vault or dismount. “We appreciate it when the girls are learning something difficult, and it’s exciting to watch,” says Gill, who is a favorite to win this year’s NCAA all-around competition. Women’s co-captain Lindsay Wing, who earned a perfect 10 on balance beam in competition last year, says her teammates like to yell encouragement across the gym: “Earlier today, the guys were doing a circuit-type thing that looked so painful and hard, and we were, like, ‘Come on, you’re about done!’ ”
Smyth says that for the women and men “to be in the same gym, training together, is very unusual and a definite positive.” Last year the two teams drew 3,000 spectators to a dual meet in Maples Pavilion, and they hope to fill 1,400-seat Burnham Pavilion for this season’s home competitions. The women hosted a preseason “Sips and Swings” exhibition that brought fans to a wine tasting and silent auction in mid-December, and the men have scheduled an alumni meet as a January 10 fund-raiser. “A bunch of out-of-shape gymnasts come back and try to relive their glory days,” Glielmi explains. “It can be quite scary at times, but also entertaining.”
The men compete in six events at the collegiate level—vault, pommel horse, still rings, parallel bars, horizontal bar and floor exercise—with six athletes per event, and the top four individual scores counting as a combined team score. That means designing 36 different routines that have distinctive rhythm and form—and can be made to look easy. “If it looks like they’re struggling, they’re probably not going to get good scores,” Glielmi says.
Smyth is confident in the women’s ability in their four events—vault, floor exercise, uneven parallel bars and, above all, balance beam. The beam “takes such mental toughness and concentration, and many times it’s the meet breaker,” Smyth adds. “And we have Lindsay and Lise Léveillé [’04] for a powerful one-two punch.”
As Wing, ’04, continues to polish her beam routine, she’s also working on the quick-twitch muscles that can energize jumps on the floor. Gill’s goal is to get stronger on the rings for the static positions, like the iron cross and Maltese cross, that require such unflappable finesse. In the Maltese, “you have to hold yourself completely flat, parallel with the ground and level with the rings,” he says. “Man!”
Off the mats, Glielmi says, his gymnasts are always perfecting their kinesthetic awareness. And given the 3.4 grade-point average of the men’s team, he’s not surprised when the conversation turns to such concepts as the conservation of angular momentum. “Basically, it’s the ice-skater theory, about what you do with your arms in a spin.”
The sport, Glielmi adds, is lots of fun to watch, “and what’s exciting is that the littlest thing, the smallest deviation from the correct angle, can cause the biggest problem.” But doing it exactly right can earn a perfect 10.
