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As
it appears on the September 16th , 2002 edition of the NCAA
News By
Eduardo Ovalle In
a sport that enjoys such national popularity, why is it that women's
college gymnasts have the fewest number of opportunities in
intercollegiate sports? And why is it that gymnasts are being asked to
raise the money to continue pursuing the athletics opportunity that is so
readily available to most other female sports? Those
questions may sound trivial to some, but a quick look at some data shows
that they should be taken very seriously by all. Even
using conservative estimates, gymnasts have the fewest opportunities to
continue in college with respect to high-school participation, both in
numbers of teams available and in actual participation figures. The
discontinuation of four of the 89 programs last year, and therefore 70
roster spots of 1,397, will further exacerbate the decline in
opportunities for 45,000-plus high-school aged gymnasts.
Over
the last three years, the 16 Division III schools that sponsor women's
gymnastics have received an average of 300 applications per year.
That amounts to 20 additional teams with 15 gymnasts each of just
first-year students alone. The student-run Collegiate Club National
Championships had 192 female gymnasts competing last year, representing 30
colleges and universities, so there is proven interest in the current
student population as well. Yet
administrators at the colleges that dropped the sport last year claim that
gymnastics is dying. Instead
of keeping the opportunities alive for their well-deserving students, they
are precipitating the sport's demise by discontinuing their programs or,
in three out of the four cases, asking the athletes to come up with more
than $4 million to keep the program alive.
Gymnastics
will become a difficult sport to sponsor as many teams already are forced
to travel to neighboring states to find competition. And, as conference
sponsorship decreases, it places the other programs in the conference in
peril. Administrators
also fail to realize that they are driving away some of the best students
from their campuses. Graduation rates for gymnasts exceed 90 percent,
which is far above the all-student rate of 52 percent.
In 2000 and 2001, an average of more than 35 percent of gymnasts
finished the year with at least a 3.500 grade-point average. The National
Collegiate Gymnastics Association (NCGA) awards all-scholastic recognition
to the seniors who finish their academic career with a 3.000 or better.
In 2002, the NCGA recognized 76.6 percent of their seniors.
And
per capita, gymnasts have received more NCAA postgraduate scholarships
than any other female sport over the last five years.
Gymnasts have also been named NCAA Women of the Year state winners
and top 10 finalists at a per capita rate higher than any other sport.
The 2002 Verizon Academic All-American At-Large University Division
Team named 8 gymnasts out of the 45 members including the overall Team
Member of the Year. Given
this type of supporting evidence, one would think that college
administrators would welcome gymnasts with open arms to their campuses. It
is well documented that women's gymnastics is the most popular sport
during the summer Olympics. That alone has helped prompt the National
Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships to be the only NCAA women's
championship televised nationally on a non-cable network.
Yet
gymnastics requires ever-changing, high-performance and expensive
equipment, as well as highly technical coaching to ensure safety. Because of that, many high schools have been forced to
discontinue the sport. Even some states such as Utah, Alabama and Florida
have chosen to cut their high-school programs. That has forced some
gymnasts to move to different sports such as track and field and swimming
and diving. There
also is a direct relationship between the reduction in opportunities to
participate in high-school gymnastics and the increase in competitive
spirit squads, a collective group the National Federation of State High
School Associations shows as 88,561 members strong. It is safe to estimate
that at least 10 percent of those athletes would be participating in
gymnastics if they had the opportunity.
And
while the number of high-school teams has declined, so have the
opportunities to continue in college. Even a 54 percent increase in USA
Gymnastics membership over the last 10 years and a 37.5 percent increase
in the number of private gymnastics clubs has not seemed to matter. Over
the last 10 years, the number of teams - and therefore opportunities for
athletes - has increased in major NCAA female sports by an average of 117
percent. Gymnastics is the only sport for which opportunities have
decreased, by more than 10 percent over the last 10 years and an
astonishing 50 percent since 1981. Hopefully,
those numbers will prompt college administrators to follow the lead of
schools such as the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which is adding
the sport this year. The evidence is clear that not only is there a huge
demand for college gymnastics opportunities, but colleges will be rewarded
by providing such opportunities. The
National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches for Women is
interested in not only rescuing any of the programs that have been cut
this year, but finding new opportunities as well. We urge administrators
to refocus on their mission statements and realize that gymnasts personify
the mission academically, athletically and in the manner in which they
represent the university. We
have all seen what has happened to men's gymnastics and I fear that
women's gymnastics is headed in the same direction. I want to believe that
there are administrators out there who care, and if the facts included
above are not enough to open some eyes, then our sport may be doomed. Eduardo
Ovalle is the head women's gymnastics coach at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
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