By CNN
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Men’s gymnastics in the US have been on an overall downward trajectory for decades. High school and college programs have been discontinued in large numbers, including storied Big Ten programs at the University of Minnesota and University of Iowa being cut as recently as 2021.
But the United States’ performance at the Paris Olympics – with a team entirely composed of NCAA products – has college coaches feeling hopeful; team members and alternates represented Stanford, University of Michigan, Penn State and University of Minnesota’s defunct program.
The Olympians represented a fifth of all current programs, but that’s because there are only 15 active programs, 12 Division I and three Division III. Those numbers were nearly even lower – William & Mary planned to discontinue its team after the 2020-21 season but reinstated the team just a few months later.
Another ray of hope for the sport came in the fall of 2021. Simpson College and then Greenville University announced they would be launching men’s gymnastics programs.
“That was unprecedented, we hadn’t added teams for 60 years, and so to see that momentum come in terms of addition of teams was really exciting,” Penn State Head Coach Randy Jepson told CNN Sport.
Both schools are Division III with around 1,000 students each, paling in comparison to Division I gymnastics schools like University of Michigan with 50,000 students. But Colin Payne, the head coach at Simpson, isn’t concerned by that.
“We’re not worried about the fact that Michigan has a better gym than us. We’re gonna go out there and we’re going to do the best gymnastics we can do,” Payne said to CNN.
“Gymnastics lends itself to that kind of mentality because, as I like to say, there’s no defense in gymnastics, right? There’s nothing I can do about the other guy’s routines. All of our athletes can only control themselves, their routines and what they’re going to do on the competition floor.”
Simpson and Greenville embody a hope for the sport’s future. These significantly smaller programs are already competitive with Division I teams after only existing for two years.
At the end of this past season, Greenville ranked higher than William & Mary and Army.
The early success of these programs bodes well, but even winning isn’t always enough to sustain a program. Eleven programs that won a national championship at some point no longer exist.
Winning doesn’t mean a program will stay alive, but money can. Typically, few sports besides football and basketball drive a profit, but the NCAA is in a new era with name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and student-athletes being treated more like employees. Gymnastics has long been familiar with private organizations separate from schools because many kids grow up competing in clubs when their schools don’t offer the sport.
NIL deals stem from an NCAA policy change in 2021, allowing student-athletes to profit from sponsorship opportunities.
The move came after California started a nationwide trend in 2019 by passing a law entitling athletes to earn endorsement money, followed by a landmark 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said student-athletes could receive education-related payments, reshaping the landscape of college sports.
“I see a place with NIL where there could be some kind of fusion between this private enterprise model and college athletics, and if we are smart and we’re moving in the right direction, which I believe we are, there’s actually a surprising amount of opportunities for gymnastics, where other sports don’t necessarily have that same specialization and that same privatized model in place already,” Payne said.
Combining this possibility with the surge of popularity from the Olympics offers a light on the horizon for men’s gymnastics.
“In my coaching career, this is probably one of the most optimistic points for me,” Payne told CNN. “We do have something that people are interested in and hopefully this moment with the Olympics, with the success with whatever cultural buttons Stephen Nedoroscik has managed to push, we can capitalize on that.”
Nedoroscik, a bronze medalist for the US in the team event and on the pommel horse, has already benefited the sport in ways that probably won’t be seen for years. The Athletic reported that his hometown gym has had unprecedented interest from parents trying to sign their sons up for classes. He recently appeared on the Tonight Show, too.
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The pommel horse specialist surprised many when he made the Team USA squad given he only competes in one event of the six in men’s gymnastics. But the Americans’ gamble paid off when his performance played a large role in securing bronze in the team event – not to mention his solo success.
While he is very skilled technically, Nedoroscik’s personality was what really captured the public’s attention, between the thick-rimmed glasses he removes for competition – with the internet dubbing him the “Clark Kent” of Team USA – meditation on the sidelines while he waits for his event and his love for Rubik’s cubes.
His college coach Randy Jepson sees Nedoroscik as an example of the type of kid who would thrive with gymnastics.
“There are so many boys out there that maybe don’t fit into a niche for basketball or football or soccer, and they’re maybe a little bit different. They look at life a little differently,” Jepson said. “They’re maybe more cerebral and still want to have that athletic opportunity. Gymnastics provides that because it’s so challenging and so exciting and it’s just so fun.”
The other coaches CNN spoke to recognize this view too – gymnastics interest a certain type of kid and they need programs available at all ages to nurture that interest.
“I saw [guys] that had real potential, maybe not Olympic level potential, but had real potential to be good gymnasts that stepped away from it because they got to high school and they realized there aren’t a lot of opportunities,” Payne said.
In order to sustain and build on the team everyone loved at the Olympics, there needs to be opportunities from youth to high school to the collegiate level.
“With our sport, there’s no pro level. Really, the Olympics is the pro for us,” Payne said.
Many elite women gymnasts turn pro right out of high school, but nearly everyone on the US men’s national team is either currently in college or already graduated. That means Olympians compete in NCAA meets every weekend and fans of the sport can see those world-class skills without traveling to Paris.
“The product that people get to see at a high level when they go to an NCAA championship, even a conference championship, is Olympic level gymnastics,” Jepson said.
And while all of these teams compete and want to beat each other, they also understand that they share the same struggle of growing their sport.
“I think for men’s gym, we are kind of in this fight together of growing our sport and it’s going in such a great direction,” Greenville University Head Coach Zach Peters told CNN Sport. “And I think it is rare, what men’s gym has, and I think people would be surprised to see the relationships that we have within the head coaches.”
The sport still has room to grow, but hopefully, its future will be reinforced by the bronze of Team USA.
“The best of the best are on the floor on it every Sunday, and that’s what our fans get to see. They get to see the best of the best on any weekend during the collegiate season,” Jepson said.
