While most gymnasts are entering the year and preparing for the long gymnastics season ahead, four athletes at Gustavus Adolphus College are gearing up for not just one season, but two. Athletes Lili Guy, Maddox Lee, Autumn Schmidt, and Lily Tews navigate a unique collegiate journey by participating in both gymnastics and track and field at Gustavus. While many athletes and coaches would see dual participation as an extra burden, head gymnastics coach Aryn DeGrood and her athletes see it as a superpower.
Being a dual sport athlete at Gustavus is not just tolerated at Gustavus, it is encouraged by coach Aryn DeGrood, a former collegiate dual-sport athlete herself. After competing in two sports in high school, DeGrood became a transfer student at Gustavus competing on both the varsity gymnastics and track teams. DeGrood attributes her success as an athlete to the “built-in break” competing in another sport provides. “It’s going to allow them to cross-train, and do the things that they need to do, that’s going to help gymnastics,” said DeGrood. “I wanted to bring that mentality when I became the head coach
In order to be able to fully participate in whichever sport is in season, the athletes are only attending one practice at a time. During the gymnastics season which runs from around October to March, the athletes are only attending gymnastics practices and from March to the end of the year, track takes priority. “Once track starts I don’t really do gymnastics anymore at that point,” noted triple jumper and all-arounder Guy.
While most athletes and coaches would be worried about a complete break from gymnastics, the Gustavus program sees it as a positive. “After taking gymnastics off, it was nice to come back, feeling more physically ready and mentally ready,” said first-year Tews.
Not only does participating in the track season allow the gymnasts to have a mental break from gymnastics, it also allows them a unique cross-training experience that will transfer over to their gymnastics. “Instead of looking at it as taking away from training time, we are looking at it as well, now we are cross-training“We’re working our muscles in a different way and maybe it’ll actually help heal their bodies instead of pounding, pounding, and pounding.”
The athletes themselves have noticed a positive change in their gymnastics since starting track. Track helped Guy get back onto the competition floor after tearing her Achilles her freshman year. Things like sprints and rehab during track helped her to regain her confidence and eventually start throwing her big skills, like her Yurchenko layout full on vault. “I really attribute a lot of that success and strength to what she does on track,” added DeGrood.
Pole vaulter and all-arounder Lee claims that “learning how to jump really far helps my leaps get up higher,” while first-year Schmidt credits the speed she gained in track to the improvement she saw on vault while competing in high school gymnastics. Coach DeGrood agreed. “There’s a lot of repetition we can do in strength and conditioning to work on speed and agility, but having that other coach come in and kind of take over for 6-8 weeks, that’s really helped all of those athletes flourish in the gym” she added.
Not only does the inclusivity of dual sport athletes at Gustavus aid in the performance of their sports, but it also aids in community building and recruiting. An atypical student-athlete experience comes with an atypical recruiting process. For three of these athletes, Guy, Schmidt, and Tews, the ability to do two sports was key in their commitment to Gustavus. “Other schools I was looking at for gymnastics, they were like ‘well you kind of have to pick one’. So I liked having the opportunity of being able to do both. That’s why I chose to go to Gustavus,” said first-year Tews as she reflected on her college decision. Because of the commitment needed to be a part of a collegiate gymnastics team, when a gymnast commits to a program, it is expected that gymnastics is their main priority. “I was looking at other schools for gymnastics and it wasn’t even an option to do both”, junior Guy was told during her recruiting journey.
Lee followed a bit of a different journey as a dual sport athlete. Lee was originally committed to Gustavus for gymnastics, but after not being allowed to do any other sports in club and seeing her teammates do two sports, she decided to start pole vaulting her sophomore year. Although Lee didn’t come into college wanting to do two sports, she chose Gustavus because of the well-rounded mindset coach DeGrood has surrounding college. “I very much push and support my athletes to do other things outside of gymnastics,” said DeGrood.
Although the sport of gymnastics in Division III has previously flown under the mainstream sport radar, the hard work of these four athletes doesn’t go unnoticed by the Gustavus community. “I think there’s a big fan base that doesn’t understand how busy these athletes are and how much they’re putting into it,” said DeGrood. DeGrood should know better than anyone having done it herself. “ I just think they are superheroes,” she added.
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Article by Mary Collier
This is such a healthy approach to sports. There’s research out there that says youth who participate in multiple sports are stronger athletes and less prone to injuries over time. My daughter is 11 and does both gymnastics and a summer swim team. She can balance both during the summer but once school starts she has very little time to swim because she’s in the gym for 16 hours a week, even though swimming is a great cross training activity.
So, interesting that they are cross-training with TF and gymnastics. Since there are four of these ladies doing this, it will be fascinating to chart their season scores to see if there is significant improvement versus other athletes who are mono-sport. Tracking injuries could also be eye opening especially if there were fewer, which I hope, but to see if injuries are in locations that their specific TF event utilized, or not.
Personally, I’ve always wanted to see a gymnast x-train in artistic jump rope à la Tori Boggs, Adrienn Banhegyi, or Kaylee/Nick Woodard. In the past I have seen younger girls jump rope on the balance beam, but it looked like just an exercise. I would think serious artistic jump rope would highly complement a gymnasts’ training routine as it is a fully scalable entire body workout (cardio/strength) and would help develop timing/spacial awareness, and balance.