The U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Squad is Proof of American Greatness
A golden generation
File Under Obligatory Jingoistic Olympics Piece of the Day
This is only slightly facetious. The young women of the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team are the gold-standard proof that their country is the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Consider the Olympic evidence:
Aly Raisman:
Age: 22 years old
Hometown: Needham Massachusetts
Experience: Member and captain of 2012 and 2016 USA Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Teams
Career Medals: Three Gold, Two Silver, One Bronze
Ethnic Background: Caucasian (Jewish)
Gabby Douglass:
Age: 20 years old
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio
Experience: Member of both the 2012 and 2016 USA Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Teams
Career Medals: Three Gold
Background: African American (Christian)
Laurie Hernandez:
Age: 16 years old
Hometown: Old Bridge Township, New Jersey
Experience: Member of 2016 USA Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team
Career Medals: One Gold, One Silver
Background: Puerto Rican (Christian)
Simone Biles:
Age: 19
Hometown: Spring, Texas
Experience: Member of 2016 USA Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team
Career Medals: Four Gold, One Bronze
Background: African American (Catholic)
Madison Kocian:
Age: 19
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Experience: Member of 2016 USA Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team
Career Medals: One Gold, One Silver
Background: Caucasian (Catholic)
Biographical Summary: 5 young ladies, of diverse ethnic backgrounds, average age of approximately 19 years old, from 4 different regions of their nation, all of various forms of Judeo-Christian heritage.
Olympic career summary: Dominant.
From Johnette Howard of ESPN.com:
Numbers can sometimes seem like a dry way of making a case for best ever at anything in sports. When it comes to greatness, it’s often anecdotal evidence or images in the mind’s eye that we remember more.
But by any measure—the scores, the eyeball test, the consistently spectacular routines these five women threw out, the amplitude of the skills they perform, their imperviousness to pressure — it’s easy to make the case that this team is the best women’s team ever assembled. This was such a total domination that by the halfway point of the event, the U.S. was competing only against itself. It was Them vs. What’s Possible, Them vs. Perfection.
All coached by a former Romanian coach, Marta Karolyi, who came to the United States with her husband Bela in 1981 in search of a better life, away from their communist homeland.
From Howard, again:
This is how they responded: They went a perfect 12-for-12 on their routines, without a notable bobble. They posted the winning team score on all four events.
“We believe success comes from not only doing well for yourself but for your team,” said Simone Biles…. Also noteworthy is that Douglas and Raisman became the first American women to repeat as Olympic team champions.
The key to the success of the U.S. program, according to Howard, is this:
In hindsight, the Karolyis’ ability to push through their idea of a semi-centralized U.S. system that has allowed the national team members to train at home most of the time but reconvene five or six days a month at the ranch, which is now an official national team training site, was the flash point that started this all.
Once there, gymnasts are required to perform “pressure sets” with Karolyi and a team of evaluators watching them. Their personal coaches come along to the camp, which sparked an unprecedented level of cooperation and an exchange of ideas, rather than the club vs. club mentality that used to prevail….In the end, perhaps the most remarkable achievement is how everyone — the gymnasts, their coaches, Karolyi herself — bought into the idea of subjugating individual ambitions for the good of the group.
Bela Karolyi has said that under the old U.S. system, the clubs created “only queens of their own little gyms” who “collapsed” when they faced the rest of the world. Those days are gone.
“We believe success comes from not only doing well for yourself but for your team and then putting a lot of hard work behind that,” Biles said Tuesday. “We all support each other. We all get ready together. We’re like sisters. … And I think we’ll share a bond forever.”
So the secret to U.S. success is what it always has been on a greater level: individual striving and competition combined with a belief in the common good, meritocracy with support and education, and that key phrase — “semi-centralized,” that evokes in U.S. government teachers like me a feeling of recognition and familiarity. That’s the concept of federalism, one of the most important aspects of our union, at work.
Where else in the world can two Eastern Europeans fleeing communism establish a dominant semi-centralized organization leading to the empowerment and worldwide fame of two black, one latina, and two white girls (one Jewish) who aren’t yet 20 years old on average? Where else can you live hundreds of miles apart, competing on a daily basis to be the best individuals you can be, but come together beautifully as a team-first group of sacrificial expert performers? Where else will you find such a parable for unity and diversity, for effort and reward and community and individuality? Perhaps there are other places, but not many. I’m proud to live in the greatest of them.
You go girls.
