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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