We Need to Grow
by Alex Douglas, June 2005
I have been an observer of Sports Acrobatics/Acrobatic Gymnastics for almost 30 years. The first time I had a glimpse of it was when I worked in Seattle at the Music Hall. I had a clown act on stage when I saw Igor Ashkenazi and Staci Tutton performing on the Mike Douglas show from the New Orleans Acrobatic Team. I was performing professionally with Las Vegas style dancers and I had the vision of acrobatic dance as performed in Sports Acrobatics on Broadway.
I left Seattle in 1980 to get near Broadway in New Jersey where I had my first competitive/exhibitional acrobatic program. I wanted to learn from Igor at NOAT, but he had been burned by someone else and turned me away. At that time in the early 1980's there were two organizations competing for control of acrobatic competition. The United States Sports Acrobatics Federation (USSAF) had been founded by Glen Sunby and George Nissan, and that was the organization that NOAT competed through. The USSAF competed the 5 pair/group events of acro and platform tumbling. The second organization was founded in the Midwest by a man named Bil Copp. His organization was called the United States Acro-gymnastics Federation (USAF) and competed the 5 pair/group events of acro, platform tumbling, double-mini and trampoline events. Since I was in New Jersey I took my kids to a USAF meet in Ohio. I also put on stage shows for my kids since there was no other performance options available.
The two organizations realized that a "house divided will not stand" and made various efforts to work together. Igor had left NOAT to perform in Las Vegas. While there he became a Christian watching Jimmy Swaggert on television. He had sold NOAT to Jurek Pol and came back in 1985 where I caught up with him at the joint USSAF/USAF Nationals in Kenner, LA. He started his another gym in Metaire. I quit work in New Jersey knowing that the best training in acro I could get was with him. I trained with Sonny Brown & Marie Hickman, Michael McPhereson & Amy Ocmand, and my partner was Jan Burns. I competed in 1986 at the USSAF Nationals against Jay Groves & Christina Van Loo from NOAT and another pair, Craig Patterson & Tonya Case from California. I quit acro after that because Igor had led me to Christ. I came to Texas in 1990 with the intention of going into professional ministry, but graduated from Christ for the Nations with the realization the Lord was not leading me that way.
In 1997 the USSAF Nationals were held in Houston, Texas so I rejoined the acro community with Treviņo's Acro Team. Tonya had become the president of the USSAF and decided to drop the Federation from the organization name. I also learned that Bil Copp gave up on acro because the USSAF had the international sanction from the International Federation of Sports Acrobatics (IFSA), and focused on Tumbling, Trampoline and Double Mini in his organization based in Texas called, United States of America Trampoline and Tumbling (USATT) having obtained the international sanction from the Federation International of Tumbling (FIT).
Over all these years, the great hope of popularity and growth for both acro and tumbling was the Olympic Games. If we could only get into the Olympics, then we would get the world wide exposure of television coverage, and our sports would boom in growth. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) got tired of the petitions and made the decision that they would only deal with gymnastics sports that were a part of the Federation International of Gymnastics (FIG). That caused a major change at the international level where the two international organizations of the FIT and IFSA disolved to merge with the FIG. That meant on the national level, then that the national bodies also had to disolve to join the United States of America Gymnastics (USAG). Fast action occured for the USATT merger since they needed two years of being USAG members to participate in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. The USSA made the same merger shortly after. Their last National competition was held in Dayton, OH in 2001. After that they were apart of the USAG.
Despite all these changes, acrobatic growth has been small. I am convinced that getting into the Olympics is a pipe dream. Not that we will ever get there, though the desire is decades old, but that it will not make that much difference. In 1984 Rhythmic Gymnastics came into the Olympic fold. It has had 20 years of Olympic participation, and frankly, it still has not grown.
I want to make it clear that I am proud of the work the USSA/USAG has done to develop our beautiful sport. When I returned to the sport in 1997, Tonya Patterson was the president of the USSA. Jurek Pol had developed the Junior Olympic program and I found it to be excellent. Likewise, the sport has continued to improve both in quality and caliber. They all have done and outstanding job. I think Carissa Loughn, the current USAG acro adminstrator, is continuing in that same excellence. We have established ourselves on the international stage as serious contenders. Arthur Davis and Shenea Booth having won the gold medal in Mixed Pairs in 2004 is proof of that.
In January 2005 the USAG released the figures of athletes registered in the various disciplines that they now govern. It is shocking to see how acro stands. We are in last place for participation growth. We only have 1,062 athletes registered. Even Rhythmic Gymnastics has 51 more athletes than us. Tumbling and Trampoline have 5x's more athletes than we do with 5,678 athletes registered. Group Gymnastics has twice as many athletes as we do with 2,936 athletes registered. Men's Artistic Gymnastics has 12,076 members which is 1,267 more members than Rhythmic, Tumbling & Trampoline, Acro and Group Gymnastics combined! This has got to change.
When I began competing my team in Texas, I chose not to compete regionally in Louisiana because I knew they had a long history of high level athletes. My kids were low level and I wanted them to compete against other low level kids. (And I am proud to say that many of the coaches from the dance studios have mastered the sport and have raised many high level athletes, as well.) So for the first few years I took them to the Central Region in Missouri. I was shocked to see how large the sport had grown in that state. I knew Bil Copp's legacy was still in the Midwest, but there were not this many clubs involved back then. The first club to begin building up acro in Missouri was Mid America Acro and Tumbling by Marilyn Baumann (who later sold her club to Mindy Blankenship and Dawn Moritz), She began training other coaches in acro. Then later, Linda Porter from Rising Star Acrobatics taught others to coach acro. She apparently had gone to her friends with dance studios and personally helped them develop acro programs in their studios. That is the only way that I believe that acro will realistically grow: from the grassroots.
In 2000 and 2001 Nationals for the USSA, Marcia DeGuire had begun an additional group acro exhibition competition. When the merger occurred with the USAG, that was dropped and remained only in the Elite exhibition for the opening ceremonies of the Nationals. There was some creative routines made and a moderate participation of the acro clubs. Group Gymnastics uses acrobatic gymnastics as part of their material for their competitions. It is a natural association that the acro community has not taken advantage of. If we reach out to the Group Gymnastics club we could have a mutually beneficial relationship. They could develop acro competition pair/groups that could be used in their group routines, and we could join them in developing group routines and participate in their competitions. The Group Gymnastics Nationals were held in Dallas June 10=11, and I had a chance to speak with USAG GG director, Steve Whitlock, and he was in complete agreement on this point. We could participate in their Gym Fest competition (which is similar to what Marcia DeGuire set up for the old USSA) which has no rules whatsoever for group performance. Group could benefit from acro training for their Team Gym activity of Floor Competiiton and Gym Fest.
The Olympics is a pipe dream, as I said before. If we really want to see acro grow in the United States, then we have to follow the example of Linda Porter in reaching out to other clubs and help them start acro programs at the grass roots level. Artistic Gymnastics clubs have been resistant to participation (because they do not want to lose good athletes), but mostly because they do not understand the sport. Tumbling and Tramp clubs could participate but they would need a 40 x 40 floor. However, trampers and tumblers are often not interested in dance and prefer the simplicity of their disciplines. But dance studios and Group Gymnastics have common ground in performing arts. The last 30 years have proven that top down management has succeeded in raising the caliber of acro to international standards, but has not succeeded in multiplying the sport. Growth will come to acro when we get down to the grass roots and reach out to the clubs in our area. It is up to us as individual club coaches to reach out to the clubs around us to build the sport. It is up to us to get the promotion and publicity for our sport. We need to contact the newspapers when we host meets. We need to arrange for our best athletes to be on television for the local morning shows. We need to call other clubs. We need to offer our routines for awards ceremony entertainment at the local gymnastics meets. We need to be in the fairs, and civic activities. Let us get motivated and build the numbers in our sport. Let us stop being last place in the USAG memberships and be a serious rival to tumbling and trampoline, even artistic gymnastics. We can do it. We have a beautiful sport. As the old phone ad went, lets "reach out and touch someone!"