Striving for perfection: CMU's Jerry Reighard on gymnastics |
| Striving for perfection: CMU's Jerry Reighard on gymnastics Posted: 10 Jan 2011 03:20 AM PST
CMU gymnastics coach Jerry Reighard spots Kristin Teubner as she dismounts from the balance beam Sunday. Sun photograph by LISA YANICK-JONAITIS It's often been said that hitting a 95-mile per hour fastball is the hardest thing to do in sports. While there might be some truth hidden therein there's also some non-truth. In covering everything from Little League baseball to college football it has often been a point of convergence for me to seek out the most arduous task that an athlete can master. And without a doubt, at least from my eyes, putting a bat to ball pales in comparison to doing a backflip on a balance beam. For the past 25 years Jerry Reighard has been a taskmaster when it comes to teaching the art that is acrobatics. His Central Michigan University gymnastics team has won a record 11 Mid-American Conference titles and he has been named MAC Coach of the Year eight times. Moreover his 2010 team finished ranked 22nd in the country and on Friday his Chippewas won the Sacramento State quad via its best season-opening score since 2004. Earlier in the week the Morning Sun caught up with Reighard to discuss the upcoming season and to shed a light on what his sport is all about. Q: Last year you won the MAC Championship and finished in the top 25. You only lose two athletes from that team and return 18 of your 24 total routines so how does 2011 line up? A: It ended up being very successful mainly because of the attitude that our athletes had and that has really carried through. We lost two really good seniors (Katie Simon and Jessica Suder) but we're in a great position to keep moving forward. Q: Going into a meet every single aspect of what you're going to do is already preplanned. Why is that? A: This sport is extremely mental. Every college gymnast can do the types of skills that we do but the difference is the desire, whether you want it bad enough to do it better? When we're on the floor we're sort of militaristic. It's very hut-hut, we know exactly what we want to do and there's nothing left to chance. Continued... Everything is choreographed from when we walk out on to the floor to how we start a meet to the warm-ups. It's directed so there's no 'oh, by the way, we should do this.' We even choreograph how we run out to greet the crowd. It's gymnastics protocol. Some NCAA teams feel they can deviate from that but we know the judging core demands certain things and if you don't deliver those things you're not really on top of your game. We're always catering to what the judges expect to see. Q: Each routine is judged on a 10-point system with a 10 being a perfect score, a 9.8 being a good score and a 9.4 being below average. In short there's very little wiggle room for mistakes in gymnastics. Talk about this? A: In baseball if you bat .400 you're the best. In basketball if you shoot 60-percent from the floor you're the best. If a gymnasts scores a 6.0 how good are they? In gymnastics if you're not 97 percent on you're nothing. We have to strive for such perfection. It's sort of like if the guy kicks the field goal for three points and the referee said 'you had no arc on that kick so it's worth only two points.' Or if the umpire doesn't like the way you wind up and says 'sorry that's not a strike.' That's the world we live in. It's subjective so the good coaches and good gymnasts learn the ins and outs of that and work to satisfy it. Q: There's lots of wear and tear that comes with the sport of gymnastics, can you speak to this point? A: Most gymnasts start when they're 3 or 4-years-old so by the time they get here they've paid the price. In a lot of sports you wear pads because they're contact sports. We're definitely a contact sport, we just contact the beam or the bars or the floor and we having nothing to protect us. The standard rule in the sports world is you shouldn't jump off of anything higher than you can jump on to. So if you can't jump up onto three feet you shouldn't jump down because your bones and muscles aren't ready to do that. Our bar kids are landing from 12 to 15 feet in the air and I can guarantee you they can't jump 15 feet into the air. They do this 30 times a day, five days a week for 15 years so it takes its toll. Q: What's your role as coach? I have heard you're a stickler and very demanding? A: We have to be demanding as coaches. When we see a fault we just flat out stop the person in mid-routine and say 'that's not acceptable' just like a drill sergeant would. I really try to compliment kids every day because that's part of what I want to do. But the world of gymnastics is such that we're always criticizing, we're always picking, we're always fixing. Imagine if your boss did that to you four hours a day, five days a week, you'd quit. Continued... We start every year by saying, 'you know what, nothing we say in these four walls is personal.' If you take it personally that I don't like you because I'm yelling at you we're not going to last. We remind them of that all the time. They know why I'm getting on them because I want them to be a champion. Q: What separates CMU gymnastics from other college programs? A: You have duties that you have to perform and there's no getting out of those duties. When we set the practice plan you're going to do it no matter how long it takes. If you're stuck on an event for three hours that's the way it is. The kids have to know where you're taking them and all they have to do is look at the wall (championship banners) to know what could happen. I tell every recruit my job is to get every tenth of a point out of you. Q: What's the difference between a 9.4 and a 9.9? A: Every college gymnasts can score a 9.4, but that's not getting it done here. Going from a low nine to a high nine is painstaking but it's only half as painstaking as going from a 9.7 to a 9.8. From 9.8 to 9.9 it's so meticulous. The difference comes in pure form and execution. You can't wobble or take a step that isn't choreographed because if you do you're back to the 9.7 or 9.6. That's why we do this four hours a day. Q: You're hosting the MAC Championships this year on March 19 and have a special event on Jan. 30 where your team and the CMU wrestling team will be competing at the same time. Talk about this. A: The Rumble and Tmble has been an idea that I've had for about four years. Before we didn't have the facilities and everybody didn't buy into it because it was kind of a foreign idea. The question was how is gymnastics and wrestling going to compete simultaneously? This year it finally came to fruition and I'm really excited about it."
CMU gymnastics coach Jerry Reighard spots Kristin Teubner as she dismounts from the balance beam Sunday. Sun photograph by LISA YANICK-JONAITIS It's often been said that hitting a 95-mile per hour fastball is the hardest thing to do in sports. While there might be some truth hidden therein there's also some non-truth. In covering everything from Little League baseball to college football it has often been a point of convergence for me to seek out the most arduous task that an athlete can master. And without a doubt, at least from my eyes, putting a bat to ball pales in comparison to doing a backflip on a balance beam. For the past 25 years Jerry Reighard has been a taskmaster when it comes to teaching the art that is acrobatics. His Central Michigan University gymnastics team has won a record 11 Mid-American Conference titles and he has been named MAC Coach of the Year eight times. Moreover his 2010 team finished ranked 22nd in the country and on Friday his Chippewas won the Sacramento State quad via its best season-opening score since 2004. Earlier in the week the Morning Sun caught up with Reighard to discuss the upcoming season and to shed a light on what his sport is all about. Q: Last year you won the MAC Championship and finished in the top 25. You only lose two athletes from that team and return 18 of your 24 total routines so how does 2011 line up? A: It ended up being very successful mainly because of the attitude that our athletes had and that has really carried through. We lost two really good seniors (Katie Simon and Jessica Suder) but we're in a great position to keep moving forward. Q: Going into a meet every single aspect of what you're going to do is already preplanned. Why is that? A: This sport is extremely mental. Every college gymnast can do the types of skills that we do but the difference is the desire, whether you want it bad enough to do it better? When we're on the floor we're sort of militaristic. It's very hut-hut, we know exactly what we want to do and there's nothing left to chance. Everything is choreographed from when we walk out on to the floor to how we start a meet to the warm-ups. It's directed so there's no 'oh, by the way, we should do this.' We even choreograph how we run out to greet the crowd. It's gymnastics protocol. Some NCAA teams feel they can deviate from that but we know the judging core demands certain things and if you don't deliver those things you're not really on top of your game. We're always catering to what the judges expect to see. Q: Each routine is judged on a 10-point system with a 10 being a perfect score, a 9.8 being a good score and a 9.4 being below average. In short there's very little wiggle room for mistakes in gymnastics. Talk about this? A: In baseball if you bat .400 you're the best. In basketball if you shoot 60-percent from the floor you're the best. If a gymnasts scores a 6.0 how good are they? In gymnastics if you're not 97 percent on you're nothing. We have to strive for such perfection. It's sort of like if the guy kicks the field goal for three points and the referee said 'you had no arc on that kick so it's worth only two points.' Or if the umpire doesn't like the way you wind up and says 'sorry that's not a strike.' That's the world we live in. It's subjective so the good coaches and good gymnasts learn the ins and outs of that and work to satisfy it. Q: There's lots of wear and tear that comes with the sport of gymnastics, can you speak to this point? A: Most gymnasts start when they're 3 or 4-years-old so by the time they get here they've paid the price. In a lot of sports you wear pads because they're contact sports. We're definitely a contact sport, we just contact the beam or the bars or the floor and we having nothing to protect us. The standard rule in the sports world is you shouldn't jump off of anything higher than you can jump on to. So if you can't jump up onto three feet you shouldn't jump down because your bones and muscles aren't ready to do that. Our bar kids are landing from 12 to 15 feet in the air and I can guarantee you they can't jump 15 feet into the air. They do this 30 times a day, five days a week for 15 years so it takes its toll. Q: What's your role as coach? I have heard you're a stickler and very demanding? A: We have to be demanding as coaches. When we see a fault we just flat out stop the person in mid-routine and say 'that's not acceptable' just like a drill sergeant would. I really try to compliment kids every day because that's part of what I want to do. But the world of gymnastics is such that we're always criticizing, we're always picking, we're always fixing. Imagine if your boss did that to you four hours a day, five days a week, you'd quit. We start every year by saying, 'you know what, nothing we say in these four walls is personal.' If you take it personally that I don't like you because I'm yelling at you we're not going to last. We remind them of that all the time. They know why I'm getting on them because I want them to be a champion. Q: What separates CMU gymnastics from other college programs? A: You have duties that you have to perform and there's no getting out of those duties. When we set the practice plan you're going to do it no matter how long it takes. If you're stuck on an event for three hours that's the way it is. The kids have to know where you're taking them and all they have to do is look at the wall (championship banners) to know what could happen. I tell every recruit my job is to get every tenth of a point out of you. Q: What's the difference between a 9.4 and a 9.9? A: Every college gymnasts can score a 9.4, but that's not getting it done here. Going from a low nine to a high nine is painstaking but it's only half as painstaking as going from a 9.7 to a 9.8. From 9.8 to 9.9 it's so meticulous. The difference comes in pure form and execution. You can't wobble or take a step that isn't choreographed because if you do you're back to the 9.7 or 9.6. That's why we do this four hours a day. Q: You're hosting the MAC Championships this year on March 19 and have a special event on Jan. 30 where your team and the CMU wrestling team will be competing at the same time. Talk about this. A: The Rumble and Tmble has been an idea that I've had for about four years. Before we didn't have the facilities and everybody didn't buy into it because it was kind of a foreign idea. The question was how is gymnastics and wrestling going to compete simultaneously? This year it finally came to fruition and I'm really excited about it." 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