Think about the different hats a parent has to wear: working professional, grocery store runner, taxi driver, cook, cleaner. Now imagine adding the additional job of project manager for a level 10 gymnast who trains anywhere from 20 to 40 hours a week. For the parents of high-level gymnasts, finding balance in their families is an ongoing challenge. What goes on behind the scenes? What does it take to parent a collegiate gymnast?
To help their kids reach the highest levels of gymnastics, parents need to be equally as committed as their kids to turn dreams into reality. Kelly Piedrahita, the mother of Penn State gymnast Ava Piedrahita, is one of these parents who has to juggle multiple roles. Beyond managing the financial aspects of training like paying for tuition, grips, tape, and competition fees, Kelly also handles the logistics: scheduling physical therapy appointments, talking to teachers and academic counselors, and just making sure Ava has a meal to eat when she gets home from practice. Kelly’s daytime job as a pharmacist, working 12-hour shifts, makes the logistics aspect extremely difficult and requires her family to think multiple steps ahead constantly. “I had to make arrangements with friends, teammates, parents, neighbors, and even co-workers to help transport Ava to the gym, school, and back home,” Kelly said. “If I wasn’t going to be home when Ava got home from practice, I made sure I had a meal prepped ahead of time to maintain good nutrition and support her health.”
In addition to the more tangible responsibilities, parents also use these opportunities to teach their kids important values that will set them up for adulthood. Lauren Izaks, the mother of Abby Izaks, a rising freshman at Central Michigan, said one of the most important skills they imparted was laying the foundations for being an intrinsically motivated, independent adult. “I took a hands-off approach to Abby’s gymnastics; I was just her biggest cheerleader,” Lauren said. “We offered to drive her to Central Michigan for summer training and she didn’t want us to, she drove herself because she felt that she literally needed to be in the driver’s seat of her career, so she took herself to school.”
Lauren shared the familial sacrifices they needed to make to accommodate Abby’s training schedule. “Everything we did as a family was around her (Abby’s) schedule. We had dinner when she got home from the gym, even though it was much later than what we would have wanted. We had to divide and conquer a lot as a family,” said Lauren. Abby, who attended public school, had to work closely with teachers, counselors, and the principal to accommodate her tight training schedule. “On Abby’s Collegiate Signing Day, I brought the principal as big a bouquet of flowers as I brought Abby because she played a very significant role in helping Abby get to that level,” said Lauren.
Brendi Romick, the mother of rising Washington junior Lilly Tubbs, echoed Lauren’sentiment and emphasized the importance of having agency over your own career. Romick shared a story of how Tubbs took learning the code of points into her own hands because she realized she was missing an important composition requirement, despite her coach saying otherwise. Tubbs made adjustments to her routine’s composition and noticed a bump in her scores. “It is so important to be grounded and to be your own agent, this is a skill that translates into being a productive adult,” Romick said. “That’s one thing as a parent, besides the financial and mental support, you’ve got to provide them with the tools necessary to make decisions in life.”
Romick also felt that one of the most important lessons was to teach adaptability and to keep things in perspective. “You’ve got fifty plates up in the air and they’re spinning, when one comes crashing down, you pick up the pieces and start right back up. When there’s a hiccup in the plan, that’s okay,” said Romick.
Navigating the college recruitment process as a family is a high-stress task and can create tension. Each family offered advice for parents whose athletes are going through this for the first time. Lauren mentioned how important it was to find mentorship to help guide you through the process. “Find a mentor, whether it’s a college recruiter, a coach at the gym, find a third party that loves and supports your daughter to help because it is such a high-stress situation and to put that on your family is a lot,” said Lauren.
Lauren also mentioned how delegating college recruitment tasks to only one day of the week helped ensure the stress of college recruitment didn’t distract their family from the other important tasks they had to get done during the week. “We only talked on one day a week about recruiting and going to college,” Lauren said. “We would have an hour every Sunday where we would sit down and get to work answering emails, sending out recruitment videos, and we did it on Sundays because it could take over our lives and I think that added stress if you talk about it every day and it’s all you’re going to talk about is too much.”
When I asked Romick if there was anything she wished she could’ve changed in the recruiting process, she mentioned one thing: being ready to adapt. “Even if you do everything a coach tells you to do, they may not necessarily do the same thing for you,” Romick said. It was a hard lesson to learn because some college coaches are asking you to call every two weeks and then sometimes you’re ghosted, despite you doing everything right.” Romick said it was a difficult lesson to learn, but being resilient is an important life lesson everyone needs to navigate life.
Kelly summed up the college recruiting process in a concise six-step list, emphasizing the importance of proactively reaching out to coaches, being organized, focusing on academics, and visiting campuses, but the last point she mentioned stuck out: trust the process. “Have confidence that the right opportunity will come along,” Kelly said. “Trust that your hard work and dedication will pay off.”
Everyone has their own path in gymnastics whether it leads them to the Olympic Games, a Division I college team, or simply becoming a confident, healthy adult ready to take on life’s challenges. However, for most of us, the path to get there is rarely traveled alone.
READ THIS NEXT: A Day in the Life of a College Gymnast: Strength Training and Recovery
Article by Daniel Rothwell
