The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 17

T

he last Michigan 
team to win a 
national title was 
men’s gymnastics. 

The last one before that was 
also men’s gymnastics. By any 
measure, it’s 
among the 
most success-
ful programs 
in the school’s 
history, with 
six national 
titles and 
three in the 
last decade.

In short, 

when Kurt 
Golder — the coach who won 
those championships — talks, 
you should listen.

Golder started out his coach-

ing career at a local high school 
while in junior college, trying 
to scrape the grades to attend 
Michigan and compete in men’s 
gymnastics. He got the grades. 
He went to Michigan. Then, 
in his fifth year of school, he 
coached at Ann Arbor Huron 
High School. He’s been coach-
ing ever since, first at Ann Arbor 
Huron, then as an assistant at 
Michigan State, then at Genesee 
Valley — a boys’ gymnastics 
club — then at Iowa, then back 
at Michigan, with work for the 
U.S. national team peppered 
throughout. He’s won four 
national titles with the Wolver-
ines, including the school’s most 
recent in any sport, in 2014.

Now, he’s watching what 

could be the slow death of his 
sport.

Universities have been drop-

ping men’s gymnastics programs 
since the advent of Title IX in 
1972, so this isn’t a new prob-
lem, but it’s one accelerated by 
the pandemic. There were 15 
men’s programs competing last 
season and three — Iowa, Min-
nesota and William & Mary — 
have dropped the sport due to 

budget cuts. That means of the 
three colleges where Golder has 
coached, Michigan is the only 
one that still has a men’s gym-
nastics program.

“You’re seeing the demise of 

your sport, to some extent, right 
in front of your eyes,” Golder 
said.

He was sitting in his office, 

mask off so his words wouldn’t 
be obscured through the phone, 
on Tuesday afternoon. A couple 
hours prior, the Big Ten had 
announced it would play a foot-
ball season that, for all intents 
and purposes, amounts to a 
saving financial grace for strug-
gling athletic departments. 
Michigan, before and after that 
announcement, has been consis-
tent in the position that it won’t 
drop any sports, and Golder 
has nothing but praise for ath-
letic director Warde Manuel for 
sticking to it. 

But that won’t matter if the 

Wolverines are the only team 
left standing a few years from 

now.

“What we need right now is 

good leadership,” Golder said. 
“Let’s say when the bald eagle 
was nearing extinction, they 
put a Protected Species Act, and 
now the bald eagle is thriving. 
And that was good leadership. 

“... We just need athletic 

directors, like at the University 
of Iowa and the University of 
Minnesota, to have an attitude 
like our athletic director, Warde, 
and just say ‘We’re not gonna 
drop any sports.’ ”

Golder first started notic-

ing the effects of contraction 
decades ago when high school 
programs eliminated their 
men’s gymnastics teams. That, 
combined with a short high 
school season, meant talented 
young gymnasts who were seri-
ous about competing in college 
or the Olympics had to train at 
private clubs. Put it together and 
you get a country club sport.

Now, with fewer college 

programs, there’s more good 

athletes than scholarships. Tal-
ented gymnasts may get cut out 
of the sport if they can’t find a 
collegiate home. In turn, there’s 
less competition for the Olympic 
program, which already pales in 
comparison to the U.S. women’s 
team.

“I don’t see how gymnastics 

is gonna survive,” Ron Rapper, 
a captain on Michigan’s 1970 
national championship men’s 
gymnastics team said. “... For 
the athletes, yeah, they’re losing 
the sport they love, but they’re 
losing a lot of intangibles that 
they’d be able to build their life 
upon. Not everyone becomes an 
Olympic gymnast. Not everyone 
becomes an NFL football player. 
But that doesn’t mean that they 
don’t receive positive benefits 
from participating in the sport.”

If you’re a believer in the 

stated mission of college athlet-
ics — academics and life lessons 
and all of the stuff people like 
to talk about — you should care 
about this a whole lot more than 

whatever’s happening with 
football. Because men’s gym-
nasts aren’t making money off 
professional careers. Nobody 
is dropping bags to get them to 
commit. They’re the athletes to 
whom something resembling the 
NCAA’s mission actually applies, 
and schools are cutting them 
anyway.

“It does seem like we’re the 

targeted one,” Golder said. “Boy, 
I don’t have a good answer for 
(gymnastics being cut), unfortu-
nately. They’re one of the clean-
er programs in a department. 
They stay out of trouble for 
the most part. They have great 
GPAs, they take real challeng-
ing courses, they don’t bother 
people or anything. 

“In my opinion, they’re sort of 

like the model student-athletes, 
and they’re not rewarded for it. 
They’re eliminated as a result 
of it.”

When football season was 

canceled, the anger was pal-
pable. Parents protested in Rose-

mont and Ann Arbor. The public 
lost its mind and the season 
became a political prop.

Football is a lot bigger than 

men’s gymnastics. But maybe 
this deserves more than some 
frustration in select quarters of 
the internet.

“If there’s outrage because 

they’re delaying the (football) 
season or something like that, 
I’m OK with that,” Golder said. 
“I wish that we had the same 
public support and the same 
outrage when they cancelled our 
season. We had a really, really 
good shot at winning the Big 
Ten and NCAA championship 
last year. And of course that 
story will never be told or we’ll 
never know if we would have or 
not.

“But I’m just all about oppor-

tunities for every sport and 
it hurts to see any sport be 
dropped. Stanford dropped 11 
sports. They didn’t drop men’s 
gymnastics, so I’m real happy 
about that. But I’m pissed that 
the culture in America is elimi-
nating opportunity.”

Golder had to tell his team, 

one he thought had a shot at a 
national title, that their season 
was over last March. Imagine 
if he had to tell them the sport 
itself was done.

At least at Michigan, that 

won’t happen soon. But it’s hap-
pening elsewhere. 

Michigan doesn’t make 

money off men’s gymnastics. 
Even if there was a possibility of 
having fans this year, tickets are 
free. There aren’t media rights. 
These guys are playing for them-
selves and their school. And 
their sport is on the brink.

It’s on everyone else to notice.

Sears can be reached at 

searseth@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ethan_sears.

A sport is dying. Does anyone care?

ETHAN
SEARS

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily

Men’s gymnastics programs at universities across the United States are being canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Allyson Eggleton lives by a 

formula.

Event, plus response, 

equals outcome. In a given 
race, the junior rower and her 
teammates on the Michigan 
women’s rowing team use it to 
spend energy only on what they 
can control, and not any bumps 
thrown their way. 

It seems simple enough. 

But when grappling with the 
age of COVID-19, the Big Ten 
canceling sports and prior per-
sonal struggles, Eggleton rode 
out — and continues to ride 
out — that mantra in the face of 
adversity. 

“Student athletes have such 

a pressure put on them and are 

seen as these holy icons of grit, 
strength and perseverance,” 
Eggleton said. “(Know) that it’s 
okay to struggle too, and that 
we all struggle, and that it’s not 
anything that’s not normal.”

As a teenager, Eggleton 

experienced, in her own words, 
severe bouts of depression and 
anxiety. Not comfortable tell-
ing anybody, she didn’t men-
tion it to anyone for four years 
until she told her doctor during 
her junior year of high school 
and finally found effective 
treatment methods.

That, in combination with 

coming to Ann Arbor, was a 
turning point — a renewed 
focus on the response, as 
opposed to the event. 

“The lowest was towards the 

end of high school, so coming 
out of that and coming to Mich-

igan, I was already working my 
way back up from like, a really 
dark place,” Eggleton said. 
“Michigan has been so helpful 
for me to have a community 
of people so passionate about 
what I’m passionate about.”

Whereas before Eggleton 

didn’t feel comfortable being 
vulnerable about mental 
health, her time at Michigan 
has not only enabled her to 
grow intrinsically, but also 
shaped her into a vocal advo-
cate for student-athlete mental 
health. Eggleton chose to major 
in psychology, is a student 
ambassador for “The Hidden 
Opponent” — a non-profit that 
aims to “address the stigma in 
sports culture” — and hopes 
to be selected to be one of two 
yearly mental health liaisons 
that facilitate discussions 

between student-athletes and 
the athletic department. 

And even though she 

believes that the Michigan 
athletic department as a whole 
does a good job of destigmatiz-
ing mental health and stress, 
she knows there’s always work 
to be done for every individual. 

“I think there’s a culture, 

I can’t speak on every team’s 
behalf, but the culture that 
my team and my coaches have 
built up has shown me a side 
of Michigan athletics that is 
focused on being the best you,” 
Eggleton said. “We preach ‘The 
Team, The Team, The Team,’ 
but you can’t contribute any-
thing to your team if you can’t 
keep yourself sane and happy.”

Eggleton is assured and plac-

id when she says that, but to 
anyone that’s followed college 

athletics during the COVID-19 
pandemic and the perils of can-
celed seasons for non-revenue 
sports, the rower’s demeanor 
only furthers underscores how 
vital being careful with her 
mental health habits is to her. 

When Michigan rowing 

coach Mark Rothstein got off 
the phone with the Big Ten 
after it canceled all spring 
championships in March, Egg-
leton was haunted — the “wails 
of her teammates” permanently 
and unforgettably etched in 
her mind. And as the sadness 
of a canceled season and time 
of relative isolation began for 
athletes across the university, 
Eggleton, as always, had a 
response. 

“We have a saying on the 

team: E+R=O,” Eggleton said. 
“Event plus response equals 

outcome, and the only thing 
that you can control in that 
formula is your response. I’ve 
been thinking about that a lot 
and how this year is looking 
going ahead, not just for my 
team but for my life, and what 
I can control, in the event of 
COVID, is my response and 
outlook.” 

“So that’s my biggest piece 

of advice — focus on what you 
can control, the way you react 
and look at any situation with a 
glass half-full, and if it doesn’t 
take you far it will hopefully 
warp your perspective a little 
bit and take you down a more 
positive path.”

Sometimes the best Egg-

leton, or anyone, can do is 
just keep rowing and react-
ing — bumps along the way be 
damned.

Allyson Eggleton’s predictably

perfect formula

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHAD SHEPARD

Allyson Eggleton, a junior on the Michigan women’s rowing team and advocate for mental health awareness, uses the formula “event plus response equals outcome” to help with mental health.

RIAN RATNAVALE

Daily Sports Editor

