Sports Her Way Motivating Girls to Start and Stay With Sports

Introduction One November day in 1983 I found myself seated at a desk on the second floor of a converted airplane hangar in Los Angeles. Anyone who knows me knows that sitting is not what I do, especially in nylons and a skirt, but there I was trying to digest everything. Phones were ringing, people scurried about, and the energy was unmistakable. It was a thrilling scene that happens only once every four years. And I was there. All I could think of was that a dream had come true, a fantasy of being part of the highest level of athletic achievement on the planet. You see, two weeks earlier I was recruited to be the director of gymnastics competition for the 1984 Olympics -- the dream and the challenge of a lifetime rolled into one mesmerizing event. I couldn't help thinking what a long way I was from Boston, where I grew up enjoying sports but never dreaming that it would dominate my every waking moment.How did I get started in sports as a girl? The seeds were planted by my parents, who always encouraged me to be active when I was a child. In our house of five children (two girls and three boys) there was no gender distinction as far as sports were concerned. Whatever sport my dad was trying to teach us, everybody tried -- for instance, many Sundays after church we would all go to the playground and play baseball. Happily, my days were filled with motion and a built-in play partner, my twin sister, Judy. We loved to skate wearing the old metal roller skates, the kind where you used a key to tighten them onto your shoes; we walked on stilts my dad built for us; we knew every way to duck in and out of a swinging rope. In the winter we would ice-skate, fling ourselves onto our red sleds, or ride the toboggan run at the playground -- it was all very electrifying to the spirit. I spent countless hours riding my bicycle, swimming, and playing tennis. It's true I had my dolls, but playing sports of all kinds was a far more addictive activity. It was just bunches of fun and made me feel good.How did I stay hooked on sports? I found my passion. In my junior year of high school I recall sitting cross-legged on a cold wooden gym floor in my not so flattering green gym suit. But on that fateful fall day none of that mattered, because in front of me was a trampoline and a set of uneven bars, the names of which I don't even think I knew at the time. They must have been in storage. At least I had never seen them before. With a sense of anticipation and excitement, I wondered what you did on those things. Looking back to the day of my awakening, I can vividly see my gym teachers' faces and recollect their names, Mrs. Reardon and Miss Finks. They wore crisply starched, tailored, cotton blouses and bright, plaid kilts. After a brief introduction they called for volunteers to be demonstrators on the apparatus. My arm shot up in the air with all the energy I could find. Luckily I was picked to be a demonstrator. That day is well recorded in my memory as the day I started gymnastics and began a fusion with sports that changed my life -- I had found my calling, something that captured my imagination, my heart, my spirit.The short year and a half that I spent training during my junior and senior years at high school led to four incredible seasons of competition at the University of Massachusetts. Three out of the four years I was fortunate to represent my college at the AIAW (Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) National Championships.Though I majored in sociology in school, it soon became apparent that sports would be the focus of my career. After a couple of years of searching for a good teaching opportunity, at the age of twenty-five I settled on becoming, with a partner, a small-business owner of a gymnastics school in New Jersey. What I didn't have in terms of business knowledge, which was quite a lot, I made up for with persistence. After six intense years of growing our program, one lWilson, Susan is the author of 'Sports Her Way Motivating Girls to Start and Stay With Sports' with ISBN 9780684865126 and ISBN 0684865122.