The History of Texas Acro
By Alexander Douglas
Acrobatics in Texas is growing, through the effort of many people. The history of Texas Acro is now ten years old, although acrobatics has been apart of Texas longer than that. Since I founded Texas Acro and was the first State Director (but now retired), and since there are still a few months before the 2008 competition season, this seems like a good time to tell this story.
Acrobatics has been performed in exhibitions by cheerleaders in Texas, as well as by university students, particularly through the Seventh Day Adventist university system. When I first moved to Texas in 1990, Doug and Randy Peterson of Peterson Gymnastics in Keane, Texas had an established acrobatic program. The Peterson brothers had competed for the USSAF and built up an elaborate acrobatic program through the Adventist community. However, they never took their athletes into competition. When I began the first competitive team program in 1997, they had interest, but refrained because of Saturday competitions.
Lorna Spellman had a circus program in Boerne Gymnastics back then, but was involved only in the US Gymnastics Federation (now USAG) competitions. At that time the US Sports Acrobatics Federation (later called the USSA) had not joined the USAG. So in 1997 I found myself with the opportunity of starting the first competitive acrobatics team in Texas.
The Journey to Texas
Before I tell that story, I should back up. I was an All Around Artistic high school gymnast in California. At that time, 1968 - 1972, there was no competitive acrobatics. The USGF had just formed in 1970, and I competed on high bar in Oakland, CA in one of their very first meets. Not until 1975 was the USSAF officially sanctioned. I moved to Bellingham, Washington as a young man and taught girls gymnastics with the local YMCA, and trained as a gym bum at (what was then called) Western Washington State College. The YMCA had an old trampoline they wanted to get rid of, so I paid them $200 for it and set it up in my backyard. As a young man I wanted to perform, not just train, gymnastics. I was not aware of NCAA competition at that time, so I sought the theatrical route instead.
In 1977 I heard about a street circus in Seattle. Bellingham is right on the Canadian border about one hundred miles north of Seattle. I called the radio station for contact information for the circus. The head of the circus was a juggler named Greg Albert. I told him that I had a trampoline that I could use in his show. He invited me down. I hitchhiked down to Seattle found an apartment, and thumbed back to Bellingham. I rolled my trampoline to the freeway on ramp in Bellingham and stuck out my thumb. As luck would have it (I know now that God was looking after me), a pick up truck stopped so I could load the trampoline in the back of the truck. The man was gracious (or was he an angel?) and drove me directly to the apartment in Seattle.
The street circus was called the "Floating World Circus" and had combined circus works with a Commedia del Arte show. To practice I signed up for classes in gymnastics taught by Dr. Eric Hughes at the University of Washington. There I met Jay Lavadure who partnered with me in a doubles trampoline act and low level acrobatics. The show toured around the Puget Sound, sometimes in paid gigs, other times as a "pass the hat" payment. Needless to say, we were all dirt poor.
In 1978 a musical dinner theater was looking for gymnasts to perform in a vaulting clown act. The producer, Greg Thompson, contacted Dr. Hughes seeking performers. At that time in gymnastics history, an gymnast could not be paid to perform for it would violate their amateur status and bar them from Olympic competition. Naturally, Dr. Hughes was not going to allow his NCAA champions to damage their Olympic opportunities. So he told me about the gig, since I was only an auditor who trained with his team (a generous allowance that has always endeared me to him). Jay was willing to perform since he had no Olympic aspirations. We networked with retired athletes who were still young and put the act together. Greg Thompson called the act, "The Wacky Illwaco Brothers."
We performed nightly on stage to large crowds. We were a specialty act in between a Las Vegas style show of dancers, singers and show girls. The first show lasted almost a year. The act broke up once and reformed with some new gymnasts due to a grievance over the amount we were paid. While performing the clown act and watching the dancers perform adagio, I saw Igor Ashkenazi and Staci Tutton perform on the Mike Douglas Show on TV. That was my first exposure to Sports Acrobatics. I had read books on funky acrobatics and basic acrobatic stunts that Jay and I used for the Floating World Circus, but the high level skills were new to me. At that time a dream was birthed in my heart, a dream that has never been realized but has tempered every effort I have made in acrobatics: acrobatic theater. I realized that acrobatics used in a Broadway musical format could be an incredible entertainment medium. This is before Cirque du Solei and the many copycat shows that now exist - all of which I am utterly delighted to see, by the way.
In 1979 I stayed on with the Music Hall Follies in Seattle as a stage hand and learned the theater from first hand experience. I helped build the scenery and flew the scenery into the fly loft. That show ran for a year until a private investor fired the producer. When Greg was dismissed, I walked and left the show. Instead, I moved to New Jersey where I got a job coaching gymnastics at Surgent's Elite School of Gymnastics. I called Igor who had begun the New Orleans Acrobatic Team in 1980 and asked him if I could train with him. He discouraged me at that time because he had been "burned" by another coach who "stole" some of his kids. One of those "kids" was Cricket Borgman (later married as LaPierre) who had informed me that she was never Igor's "kid". Nonetheless, I did not go to New Orleans as I intended.
Instead, I started my first acrobatic program at Surgent's. Of course, how do you compete when no one else is competing? So, in 1983, to give the kids performance time, I wrote a show called , "Heart of the Gymnast" which shared the story of the gymnasts life. All team programs were invited to perform. And, to my delight, Larry Malloy had begun a program and came with some of his kids. Larry had trained with Igor and knew the competition skills.
That year, George Nissan, hosted the World Cup in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I had to see international performance. So I flew out and videotaped the entire meet. Regrettably I gave the originals to a buyer of copies who kept complaining about the video quality.
At that time acrobatic competition had two competing organizations. The United States Sports Acrobatics Federation (USSAF) had the international sanction from the International Federation of Sports Acrobatics (IFSA). Even though acrobatics is not in the Olympics, IFSA held annual World Cups. If one wanted to compete internationally you had to go through the USSAF. But locally to nationally another organization run by Bil Copp, called the United States Acro-gymnastic Federation (USAF), hosted meets in trampoline, platform tumbling, double min-tramp and sports acrobatics. At a later date, knowing he did not have the international sanction, he dropped the acro and formed the United States of America Tumbling and Trampoline (USATT). The USAF was strong in the mid-west whereas the USSAF was strong in the West Coast and in New Orleans. So I took the kids from Surgent's on two trips to Ohio. The first was "local" meet run by Joni Streeber, and the second was the USAF Super Clinic with Steve Elliot as a guest clinician.
In 1984 I produced a second show called, "The Adventures of Alice" that was a gymnastics musical performed on a high school stage. I went to Kenner, Louisiana for a combined USAF/USSAF National meet, where I met Igor Ashkinazi for the first time. Igor Ashkinazi had sold his gym to Jurek Pol, went to Las Vegas to perform with Stacey, and became a Christian. He returned to New Orleans and started another club with Tom Burns. I called him up and this time he invited me down. My knowledge of acrobatic technique was in great need of improvement, so I closed my program and moved to New Orleans in 1985. Igor gave me Jan Burns (Tom's wife at the time) as my partner and I trained with Sonny Brown (who later competed with Jan) and Marie Hickman, and Michael McPherson with Amy Ocmand whose mother, Linda Ocmand was not involved with judging acro at that time. Jan and I competed against Tonya Case and Craig Patterson and the champions, Jay Groves and Christina Van Loo at the 1986 USSAF Nationals in Mobile, Alabama.
Because Igor had led me to Christ within two weeks of my moving to New Orleans, I left acro to become a disciple of Christ instead after the '86 Nationals. That change in my life is what led me to Texas and the formation of Texas Acro. In 1990 I had realized that I needed a better understanding of Christianity, so I moved to Dallas, Texas to study at Christ for the Nations. I found a job at Trevino's Gymnastics School teaching Artistic Gymnastics. In 1996 I began a Saturday morning class in acrobatics, then in 1997 a number of Artistic gymnasts wanted to quit gymnastics because of a coach who was too "mean", so they joined the Saturday morning class in Acro.
And that will be part two of the story.