Two indelible images remain from Elevate the Stage in Toledo, Ohio. One is the Iowa team taking the time to sign autographs and take photographs with girls in the audience on Friday night while waiting to rotate to its final competition event. Another is girls in the stands on Saturday night screaming for Natalie Wojcik as she started her floor routine, yelling, “Come on Natalie!” along with the Michigan team.
Those kids in the stands were wearing club gym warmups, their hair still braided, bunned and full of glitter hairspray from the J.O. competitions happening throughout the weekend. At both the Friday and Saturday sessions, a fair number of people in the audience had clearly been involved in a previous competition.
To Kayla Williams, Gymnastics Operations Coordinator at Knight Eady, the firm that puts on the Elevate meets, those moments are what Elevate the Stage is all about.
Williams—a world champion and Alabama gymnastics alumna with international elite and NCAA vault titles to her name—is a soft spoken person with passion in her eyes. Her belief in Elevate’s mission is steadfast.
“One of my favorite things that I saw tonight was a bunch of little girls that were in here competing earlier this morning lined up along the edge of the floor trying to reach their hand out and give the girls a high five,” she said smiling.
Elevate the Stage began in 2015 in Birmingham, Alabama, as a neutral site competition between Alabama and Auburn. Williams was a senior that year and competed in the inaugural competition. When in 2018 Elevate began to expand, she came on board. Now the goal is to bring the podium to as many sites as possible with both J.O. and collegiate competition.
Elevate expanded to Reno, Nevada, and Toledo during the 2018 season. That first Toledo session included only one Big Ten team, Michigan. When the opportunity arose for Elevate to bid for the Big Ten’s annual Big Five meets, Michigan was supportive. “They enjoyed the experience so much that they were a huge advocate of us pitching to the conference, which resulted in us being awarded their Big Five,” Williams said.
It was a successful move if attendance is any indication. On Friday night, 1,156 fans attended, and Saturday’s session brought in a crowd of 2,545. Most Big Ten teams regularly compete in front of several hundreds of fans, not thousands.
The uniqueness of the Elevate series cannot be overstated. In all other cases, the biggest stages in J.O. competition require qualification and for gymnasts to be at the highest levels of the club system. To compete on podium at the Nastia Liukin Cup, gymnasts must be level 10s and qualify at a participating invitational. To compete in front of college recruiters at J.O. nationals also requires qualification and competition at level 10. At Elevate, teams register like they would for any other J.O. invitational, from compulsaries and XCEL to level 10, expanding the opportunity to compete on a big stage.
Level 9s and 10s at the Elevate meets compete on the same podium in the same arena that hosts the evening NCAA sessions. It is one of the only opportunities, outside of qualified level 10s at the NLC, for J.O. gymnasts to get on podium.
The uniqueness isn’t lost on Williams. She hopes to give gymnasts, from those just getting started in the sport to those aiming to be recruited to college, the opportunity to compete on the big stage and then see up close what a big NCAA competition is all about. “Getting them under one roof, letting them see what it is, what it is like to compete in front of these crowds and really aspire to be those NCAA champions,” she said, is the heart of the Elevate series.
Part of that too is continuing to support NCAA opportunities. Elevate the Stage donates part of every J.O. gymnasts’ registration fee to the Collegiate Gymnastics Growth Initiative. The CGGI uses that money to continue to advocate for collegiate programs at all levels across the country.
As Williams prepares for this weekend’s meets in Birmingham, back where it all began, she is already thinking about the future. “The more places we can take the podium, the better we’re doing,” she said. She’s looking forward to getting as many club gymnasts and NCAA teams on the podium as possible, continuing to support the CGGI and continuing to get young gymnasts in the same arena as the college athletes who inspire them.
“I’m really excited for what this event could become,” Williams said.
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Article by Emily Minehart
You can donate to the Collegiate Gymnastics Growth Initiative here.
