Chapter 8: Mounting Tension

I HEADED FOR THE MAT where Tara and Jennifer were waiting for me. Jennifer wasted no time getting us started, so I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Tara before we started working. She didn’t seem to be in much of a mood to talk, either, so we just buckled into our routine and started working on those transitions.

We were only four weeks away from the Winter Cup competition in Louisville where Tara and I were intending to preview our routine for the USA Gymnastics Committee to get approval for the exhibition in Minneapolis in June. Coach Daniels had also let slip that she’d already entered Madison and me in the qualifier round for the mixed pairs. I wasn’t enthused.

Jennifer had sat with Tara and me to get our travel arrangements made. When Madison mentioned that we’d be traveling together, I was only too happy to inform her that I already had my travel and lodging arrangements made. My parents had decided to come down to Louisville to watch, too. I intended to spend as little time as possible with Madison and Coach Daniels.

“I’m tired,” Tara announced. “We can pick up tomorrow.”

“Would you like to go out to dinner?” I asked.

“No. I don’t feel much like being sociable right now. I’m sure you can find someone else to do.” She turned and grabbed her crutches, heading for the locker room as fast as she could. That was really strange. Jennifer just shook her head and followed.

Having an extra hour to myself before I had to get home and help with dinner, I immediately headed for the pommel horse to pick up my interrupted routine from the morning. I was combining a Russian flop followed by double splits and into a high dismount. I ran the routine three times and was pretty pleased with myself the last time I came off the dismount.

I headed toward the gymnastic mat to practice my floor routine and got into the flips and turns. I never got to do this kind of thing with the pairs routines. The tumbling was more basic and limited to things we could do in sync. Madison and I could synchronize a flip or other roll, but Tara didn’t have the leg strength to propel herself. If I did a flip, it had to be coordinated with a somewhat static move of Tara’s that I could catch her in before she fell. Madison and Tara could get as much height as I could throw them. That wasn’t too much with Tara because I also had to control her landings. Madison had to balance herself when she landed.

I really wanted to do a double pike with a twist, and I needed the sprung floor and a run-up to get the height I needed. I did a few warmups either without the twist or a single pike salto. I set myself in the corner and ran across the mat. Midway, I launched into the move.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite the height I needed and I landed without having fully rotated. I caught part of my weight on my hands and then landed on my back. I lay there for a couple of seconds, analyzing what I’d done wrong. In that time, three coaches had come running from different parts of the gym to check on me.

“I’m fine. I just didn’t get the full rotation,” I said as I sat up. “I was just trying to figure out what I did wrong.”

“You tried a new move without a spotter, Paul,” Coach Dawson said. “You know better than that.”

“Yessir. I should have waited.”

It didn’t make any difference whether I needed a spotter for this move or not. The right answer was to wait. In that way, gymnastics was just like school. You had to give the right answer in order to stop the lecture. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough this time. I had to undergo the lecture anyway, with a couple of other coaches chiming in about not being stupid in my workouts.

I finally got off the gym floor and into the locker room to shower and dress.

“How’d you manage to get everyone so mad at you today?” Andy asked in the locker room.

Andy had been one of the senior gymnasts who graduated from high school about the time I started in high school. I hadn’t seen him much because he went off to college somewhere. But he was taking a term off this spring to prepare for the trials and had come back here to practice. He was a star in the gym.

“Is everybody mad at me?” I asked.

“I just heard Coach read you the riot act. Earlier today, Coach Daniels was complaining to Dawson about something you’d done or not done. And when Tara headed to the locker room an hour ago, she looked steamed as hell. The only thing they all had in common was you,” Andy said.

“I have no clue. Everybody wants something different from me. They’re all ragging on me.”

“That’s a tough one. If you actually landed that last flip you tried, you’d be a contender in the qualifiers. It’s too bad you’re spending all that time with the pairs routines. They’re circus acts—not gymnastics. Usually, the only people who do acro-gym are those who can’t master the apparatuses,” Andy said.

I’d heard that before and even believed it. In fact, I’d made the same comment once or twice myself. If you couldn’t master the apparatuses, then you could do pairs or group acro gym on the floor. Still, I couldn’t discount acro gym being more fun than artistic gymnastics. I kind of felt the acrobatic gymnastics were more artistic and artistic gymnastics were more technical.

“I did a qualifier event in Chicago late last summer and didn’t qualify,” I said. “Coach said he didn’t think I’d progressed far enough to qualify this spring and that I should take the opportunity to help Tara. I don’t mind that. In fact, I like it a lot. I just try to keep working on my routines so I can get back to it after the exhibition in June.”

“What’s with the other chick you’re working with and Coach Daniels?” Andy asked.

“Don’t ask. I said I’d help her out after her previous partner quit on her. I thought it was just going to be an occasional thing, but Coach Daniels thinks I’m her full-time partner and has us registered to compete in Louisville. I don’t know how she managed to convince Coach Dawson.”

The more I let all this out, the more depressed I was becoming. Andy thought I could have qualified in one of the events this spring. I really didn’t mind helping and working with Tara. I liked it. She was my girlfriend and I wished we could spend more time together. But I missed doing real gymnastics and it irritated me that I had to sacrifice my workout time to practice with Madison.

“Well, I’m not your coach,” Andy sighed. “All I can say is do the best you can and don’t give up your routines. I think you’ve got what it takes, but you’re still young as male gymnasts go. There’s a lot more pressure for the women to get in the game in their teens. There aren’t that many like Simone who can hold a career together for ten years.”

“I’ll make Team USA for Worlds by 2026.”

I wished I was as confident as I sounded. After this year’s trials were over and Tara and I had done our exhibition, I planned to spend all my time getting ready for fall artistic gymnastic competitions.

In any case, I didn’t have time to worry about any of it. I received word from my school counselor that it appeared my grade average had slipped below the standard required for participation in sports at school—like cheerleading. I don’t know how they measured that. The most recent grading period had ended at Christmas and I had sufficient grades to continue. They weren’t great grades—I was still no genius—but they were good enough to continue.

On top of that, I’d been studying more than what was in school. My four classes seemed unimportant compared to the study Jennifer had assigned me to become a massage therapist. From the first time I did a guided massage on Tara’s legs, Jennifer had me keep track of every hour I put in studying massage. I was putting in a good twenty hours or more a week learning therapeutic massage.

I watched YouTube videos repeatedly to support the reading and had a one-hour practice session each day on Tara. That was a real trial by fire, so to speak. I’d learned to control my natural physical response to her. She was my girlfriend, and even though we hadn’t had much time together in the past week or so, we still kissed and I was really attracted to her physically as well as emotionally.

Something seemed to be bugging her lately and we just weren’t finding time to talk. Or anything else that wasn’t in the gym. It bugged me, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

Now there was this school thing that blindsided me.

“Paul, Mr. Fields is concerned about your progress in his class,” Ms. Brown, my counselor, said when I reported to her office. “He says your responses in class are not in keeping with the rest of the class and he feels your writing is elementary.”

Mr. Fields was my new English teacher. My last term in high school, and I get a guy who thinks everyone in his class should be a Rhodes Scholar. My previous two English classes had mostly been kids who had English as a second language, so the workload was adjusted accordingly.

“He assigns a lot of reading and I can’t get it all done. I just don’t read that fast,” I said. That hadn’t been a problem the past year and a half. My teachers had tested me on the lighter reading assignments. I guess Mr. Fields wasn’t with the program. I knew a couple of the ESL kids were struggling.

“This is the work the class is assigned. Everyone else is keeping up just fine.”

“I don’t read that fast. Isn’t there a class that isn’t as accelerated as this one?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what we can do about that. Mr. Fields is of the opinion that athletes and second language learners need to keep up with the curriculum just like everyone else does.”

“I don’t think there are any other athletes in my class. And I don’t think all the ESL kids are keeping up, either.”

“We have complaints on file from you and your parents that indicate your unwillingness to be in classes with the athletes you are referring to. The school has done its best to keep you out of classes known to cater to athletes who have limited time to study.”

“So, you keep me out of classes I’m capable of passing so I won’t get beaten up by the others you’ve chosen to give special treatment to? I don’t think I need to worry about getting beaten up or stuffed in a locker anymore.”

“Your presence in those classes could be considered an incitement. If there was violence, you would be considered at fault for not having stayed in different classes. Besides, you are older than the rest of them.”

I’d be nineteen in a month. The school wanted to be rid of me.

“Great. So, my choice is to go someplace where I’d end up being expelled for other people’s actions, or stay where I am and fail based on a different standard. That doesn’t really seem fair.”

“Avoid conflicts and keep up with the rest of your class. That sounds like the same standard all other students are held to.”

Well, shit.

“Mr. Fields, I’d like to do better in your class,” I said. I’d had to cut all my afternoon training in order to be at the school when he had a period free. He looked at me critically. I could see ‘big dumb jock’ written all over his face.