By Shireen Korkzan
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Junior Kirsten Yamasaki assumed all summer she would participate in gymnastics for the third year in a row. That is, until she received the phone call from former gymnastics coach Jerry Brickley saying there wouldn’t be a gymnastics team this year.

This past July, the administration decided to eliminate the gymnastics program here due to a lack of funding and interest. That decision has left Yamasaki and her teammates (several of whom were on the squad last year) trying to fill the gap that gymnastics used to fill.

“I really couldn’t believe it,” Yamasaki, who has participated in high school gymnastics since her freshman year, said. “It was kind of shocking to me and disappointing.”

But Yamasaki said the prospect of getting rid of the gymnastics program has always been an issue, especially last year since only four athletes participated in the sport. Typically, there are 12 gymnasts on a team every year. This year, however, Brickley said about 11 girls called him to inquire about this year’s tryouts; six of them were former members (twin sisters and juniors Jennie and Julie Strauch participated two years ago but moved to Texas last year and then came back this year) and five were would-have-been new members.

According to Athletics Director Jim Inskeep, the administration chose to drop gymnastics due to many factors, the main ones being expenses, participation and student body interest. Inskeep said expenses per athlete were calculated by a per-participation rate, which totaled to costing over $1,000 per gymnast, making gymnastics the most expensive sport to sponsor. Also, gymnastics is not a growth sport across the state. Less than 20 percent of schools in Indiana offer gymnastics, and many are not even full teams. In addition, very few students not involved in the program showed up to events, he said, and when the decision was made after over a year of debating, only the people directly impacted gave feedback.

“(The athletics department) makes a lot of decisions,” Inskeep said. “You’ve got to put all the factors out on the table. There is always going to be an emotional impact. With a lack of facilities and economic constraint, you’ve got to make hard decisions.”

And this definitely left an emotional impact on the athletes, especially on the Strauch twins when they found out about the elimination of gymnastics shortly before school started, from varsity football cheerleaders who were also involved in gymnastics (both sisters participate in fall and winter cheerleading). They both said gymnastics was an activity they were looking forward to when moving back from Texas.

“Gymnastics is a really fun sport. I hope (the administration) can bring it back so people can have the same experiences as we did,” Jennie said. “It’s a great sport to show school spirit.”

Brickley said his retirement at the end of the season as well as the resignation of assistant gymnastics coach Michelle Hewitt may have been another major factor in the administration’s decision, despite Brickley finding a replacement for this year. Brickley said he had to retire for medical reasons. He has peripheral neuropathy, a condition involving pain throughout the body. Otherwise, he said he was planning to volunteer at competitions and help out the team when needed.

“We’re this great athletic school but we can’t seem to keep gymnastics?” Brickley, who is still the Indiana Coaches of Girls’ Sports Association (ICGSA) chairperson for the gymnastics committee, said. “That just doesn’t fit for me. To me, I think it hurts our image as a school that we can’t offer this choice to athletes. Some lose that opportunity to represent our school. I built this program; I have been in it for 18 years and now it’s gone.”

And that leaves the former gymnasts, like Yamasaki, trying to fill the space by participating in other sports, mainly cheerleading, because the skill sets are similar. And they may be settled with this new paradigm for a while because according to Inskeep, the removal of gymnastics is permanent for now. He said, “We’ve made the decision. We’ve moved on.”

Both of the Strauch sisters said they would do anything they could to bring the program back, despite being involved in varsity basketball cheerleading in lieu of gymnastics.

“(The gymnasts) understand why the administration made this decision, but it’s sad at the same time because it was a lot of fun for us,” Julie said. “If there was any way to help bring gymnastics back then (my sister and I) would.”

But for Yamasaki, cheerleading can’t take its place. “I’m really going to miss gymnastics. I did cheerleading in place of it but it’s not going to take the place of it,” she said. “It’s not the same. We’ve done all we could do and the decision was out of our hands.”