Y'all out on social media don't have much visibility into this side of my life. High school gymnastics MADE ME WHO I AM. I love being a coach now and trying to offer a similar experience to a new generation of kids. And this year demanded more of me than ever.
Please read on to understand why I'm so fucking proud of what my small gymnastics community accomplished.
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Last year the state dropped Boys Gymnastics as a high school Varsity sport. So coaches across the state took it upon ourselves to start our own league. I was part of the 9-member Steering Committee that made this season happen.
We spent MONTHS working out our own process for training and certifying our judges, organizing Sectional meets, and running our own STATE MEET.
AND WE SUCCEEDED!!! We ran a full season that concluded this past Saturday with 142 gymnasts from 33 different schools competing in our State Meet!
The meet ran smoothly, the gym was packed (by our standards; this isn't TX football...), and the kids had the high energy, high stakes State Meet they deserved.
I volunteered to create and run the scoring for the meet. Had to write 5000+ lines of code, work out all the coordination logistics, do all the ENDLESS data dumps and filtering along the way to figure out who qualified and how to slot them into the meet, train the workers, brief all the coaches and judges, and -- most importantly -- oversee and troubleshoot the entire process during the meet.
It was STRESSFUL. My code drove our leaderboard displays as well as provided live web-based results. I'd take quick glances up at the display board and pray it wouldn't be showing an http 404 or 500 error.
(pic doesn't do it justice; the leaderboards looked AMAZING!)
The State Meet was in my hands, on my shoulders. If I fucked up, the meet would be a disaster. Thankfully there were NO problems. Coaches were AMAZED at how well everything ran.
We had to figure out EVERY aspect of this meet. Managing who qualifies, who pays for what, selecting officials, how does the host school break even or possibly profit, all the day-of logistics, designing and ordering the trophies and medals, even produce the freakin' meet decorations, signage, and souvenir program!
ENORMOUS amount of work. But at the end of the day, we ran a PHENOMENAL, professional State Meet.
In many ways it was even better than previous years, because the coaches collectively got to make the calls and run it how WE wanted.
ps - all these photos are courtesy of coach Abi Diaz who shot the meet with my camera. We ended up with ~850 RAW images I then had to cull through and process. Yet another monster task!
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In addition to all that, I had OTHER responsibilities in the closing weeks of the season.
COACHING:
Our team fought and scraped our way to earn a TOP TEN berth to the State Meet! We also had 11 individual event qualifiers, the most of any school in the state. I strategize and optimize our routines for our rulebook and I'm the technician in the gym who refines the most subtle / difficult aspects of our key skills. Unfortunately I couldn't be with our team during the meet since I was so busy running the scoring.
JUDGING:
I judged 2 of the 4 Sectionals meets (head high bar judge!) which determine who qualifies to State. Plus a ton of dual meets throughout the season, Varsity invites, and culminating Varsity Conference meets. I'm usually voted by the coaches to be one of the top 12 judges in the state and therefore asked to judge the State Meet, but obviously had to decline this year in order to focus on my other duties.
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ONGOING:
I'm on our Rules Committee which is just starting to gear up to review and revise our rules for next season. And volunteered to remain on the Steering Committee to do it all again in 2025.