WELCOME TO

MIDDLEHOOD
BY JUDI KETTELER As I think about these things, inevi-
tably I will think about something else:
Why I stopped judging gymnastics 10
years ago. The simplest answer is that I
had kids. Gymnastics meets happen on
the weekend. Kids happen on the week-
end, too. Being gone nearly every Saturday
from October through April was too much,
especially after working all week.
The other, less simple answer is that
I had a growing sense something sin-
ister was going on right in front of me.
Though it would be another decade before
the scandal that rocked USA Gymnas-
tics would surface, the signs of it were
already there when I hung up my uniform
for good.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE STORY FROM A

few years ago about the heroic Alaska Air-
lines flight attendant who allegedly saved
a young girl from human trafficking? The
flight attendant sensed something wasn’t
right by the girl’s demeanor and fearful-
ness of the man she was traveling with. As
the story goes, the quick-thinking flight
attendant got the girl’s attention and left
her a note in the airplane bathroom asking
if she was OK. The girl wrote back and said,
“I need help.” Police met the plane in San
Francisco, and the girl was saved.
According to Snopes, the story may

Seeing the
not even be true. Nonetheless, when I read
it some years back, the first thing I thought
of was how many times as a judge—wearing
a navy blue suit that very much resembled
a flight attendant’s uniform—I had the

Scared Eyes
odd impulse to send a note to one of
the gymnasts I was judging, asking, “Are
you OK?”
It’s not that I ever saw something wor-
thy of being officially reported. But so

I LOVED BEING A GYMNASTICS JUDGE, BUT WAS I

many times, I sensed something wasn’t
right. I can’t even say it was a mother’s

ALSO PART OF THE ABUSE PROBLEM? instinct, because I mostly didn’t have kids
yet. What I saw, over and over again, was
a strange dynamic between ego-driven
THIS MONTH, AS I WATCH GYMNASTS SWING AND TUMBLE IN THE BELATED 2020 SUMMER adults (mostly men, but some women)
Olympics—if Japan actually hosts them—I’ll be in awe of their grace and power like and girls with twig-like bodies and robot-
everyone. But I’ll probably also be looking for those tiny moments when an elbow bends ic stares. Were these girls happy, I won-
or their angle isn’t quite vertical. dered? Were they being scolded for gain-
Having spent a dozen years judging gymnastics, which followed six years of com- ing weight? Yelled at and demeaned? Told
peting and six years of coaching, my eyes are still trained to see the mistakes. I fully not to question the methods?
appreciate how amazing and nearly perfect these gymnasts are, but it’s a fun game to Having grown up in the Catholic
think about whether I would give full credit for a connection on the beam that has a Church and come of age just before the
millisecond pause or if that triple twist made it all the way around. C o v i n g t o n CONTINUED ON PAGE 31

2 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 1 ILLUSTR ATIO N BY D O L A SU N

Latin School priest abuse scandal cracked
open in the 1990s, I learned early to be
suspicious of any institution that regarded
certain people as godly and bestowed on
them the recurring benefit of the doubt.
The longer I judged gymnastics, the more
I realized that the environment around me
was ripe for exploitation and misconduct.
So many of these young girls (and their
families) were driven by the idea of being
a champion. USA Gymnastics played on
that, creating a culture of silence and cov-
er-up. Of course, I didn’t know what was
being covered up back then. That would
come later.
To be clear, I also saw legions of won-
derful and dedicated coaches encouraging
their charges—young women who were
clearly loving their sport and having fun,
GYMNASTICS WAS SO IMPORTANT TO ME AS A YOUNG GIRL.
IT WAS BOTH A PHYSICAL AND MENTAL OUTLET, A WAY TO
EXPRESS MYSELF AND TO CHALLENGE MYSELF.
just as I had. I especially loved judging high
school gymnastics, where the atmosphere
was more casual, more team-focused, and
more fun than the rigor and seriousness of
club gymnastics.
I also want to clarify that I never judged
elite athletes. I was a level 10 judge, which
was at least one rating below the highest,
maybe two (the system for how one judges
the Olympics was never that clear to me).
But I didn’t need to be an elite judge to
interact with all the big clubs in the Mid-
west and to witness the dark side of the
larger-than-life personalities of many of
these coaches.
The one I crossed paths with the most
was John Geddert, who ran the Michigan
club Twistars and died by suicide in Feb-
ruary after his abuse was made public.
When the story initially broke in 2018
about how Geddert physically and verbal-
ly abused his gymnasts—pushing them,
throwing things at them, ignoring their
injuries, threatening them, and using fear
to control them—no part of me was sur-
prised. It also wasn’t surprising that he
worked in conjunction with Larry Nassar,
the former USA Gymnastics doctor who
sexually abused gymnasts for decades and
was sentenced to 175 years in prison after
dozens of gymnasts made victim impact
statements at his trial. Geddert abused
them and sent them to Nassar, who told
them he was on their side and would take
care of them.
Not only was Geddert the star of every
gymnastics symposium in the region (a
symposium was an educational confer-
ence for coaches and judges), he walked
around every gymnastics meet like he
owned the floor. My fellow judges would
say, with both dread and anxiety, “Pay at-
tention, Geddert’s girls are up next.” Judg-
ing gymnastics wasn’t my career. Unlike
some of the other judges, I didn’t run a
gym or coach or have designs on advanc-
ing through the ranks of USA Gymnastics.
This was just something fun I did on the
weekends. The extra money was nice, but
I didn’t truly need it.
So, on one hand, I remember thinking,
why would I give a shit what this pompous
jackass thinks? And yet, when he scowled
at us, threw his hands up, or stood be-
hind our judging table in a play to intimi-
date us, I was in fact intimidated. There I
was, a grown woman with multiple col-
lege degrees, a successful writing ca-
reer, and solid mental health, and I still
wasn’t immune to the anxiety he created.
What chance did a young girl have against
that kind of daily toxicity, especially when
USA Gymnastics rewarded him over and
over again? (He was the coach of the 2012
U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team.)
As a judge, my job was to offer an objec-
tive-as-possible opinion about the degree of
bend in a gymnast’s knees or the amplitude
in her tumbling. I could do that. Increasingly,
though, I couldn’t seem to distance myself
from the look I would sometimes see in a
gymnast’s eyes. The look that made me
wonder what was really going on.
WELCOME TO MIDDLEHOOD
BY THE LATE 2000S, I MADE A CON-
scious decision to stop judging club gym-
nastics. I didn’t want to be in that envi-
ronment anymore. I wondered if I wasn’t
somehow part of the problem because I
was participating in a system that idolized
coaches and didn’t ask questions. That de-
cision coincided with having my first child
and needing to scale back anyway. By the
time my second child was born in 2010, I
was only doing a handful of high school
meets, and demands on my time eventu-
ally made me quit that as well.
Learning about the scandals years lat-
er sickened me, obviously. It also left me
with a feeling of regret. And yet, layered
under all of that, a deep and abiding love
of the sport.
Gymnastics was so important to me
as a young girl. It was both a physical
and mental outlet—a way to express
myself and to challenge myself. I still
do handstands nearly every day and
turn playground curbs into balance beams
so I can do leaps and pop out cartwheels.
I still love how the movement feels, even
as my adult body doesn’t always want
to play along.
While I had some initial dreams
about being an Olympic champion
after I watched Mary Lou Retton in 1984,
I dropped that goal pretty quickly because
I was a realist. I did gymnastics through
the YMCA and had a series of lovely
college girls as coaches. I worked hard,
but it wasn’t an overly serious environ-
ment. At the time, my reasoning was, Oh,
my family doesn’t have the money to send
me to a fancy private club, which is where
you need to go to get really good. That
was true, but I also didn’t have the right
personality to be a gymnastics champion.
I’m terrible at submitting to authority.
At not questioning. At blind faith. It’s
why I was a lousy Catholic. It’s why I’ve
worked for myself for 20 years. It’s cer-
tainly why I couldn’t stand to be around
John Geddert.
I just wish I would have done some-
thing. Passed my score to my head judge,
along with a secret Post-it note to the girl
with the scared eyes, saying, “Are you OK?”
Because, at the end of the day, the adults
in the room did a terrible job of protecting
the children.
J U LY 2 0 2 1 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 3 1