SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – For every athlete growing up there are heroes, there are legends, then there are icons and for some young stars there are moments when they get to meet one of them.
For the Saratoga Springs High School gymnastics team, they had the opportunity to meet all three of those in one historic woman, nine-time Olympic gold medalist and the first owner of a Perfect 10 score in gymnastics, Nadia Comaneci.
Comaneci who burst onto the world scene as a 14-year-old Romanian gymnast captured the eyes and hearts of the world at the 1976 Olympics, not only earning the perfect score of ’10’ across the judge’s scorecards, but then doing it six more times and capturing three gold medals.
She was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Newsweek and Time magazine and young gymnasts wanted to be just like her.
“I’ve had a passion for gymnastics for so long, it’s been part of my life since I was five-years-old, this is going to be my 50th year and to have this as an early birthday present is unbelievable,” Saratoga Springs head coach Deb Smarro said. “I remember sitting in front of the television, I was six and a-half years old, I remember asking my mom to cut my bangs just like her because I wanted to look like her.
“All the interviews she did she talked about wanting to be the best. She was humbled, she was elegant, she was strong, all of those things were qualities that I admired at a very young age and I wanted to do that throughout my life.”
Comaneci along with Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee will both serve as honorary captains of the inaugural all-women’s sports event, the Aurora Games, held Aug. 20 to 25 at the Times Union Center in Albany. She will guide the female competitors for Team World.
“At the press conference somebody mentioned ‘Why now?’ and I’m like ‘Why now? That’s a good question, but there is always a first,” Nadia Comaneci said. “It was great that a gentleman had thought about that, married to a lady athlete (Nancy Kerrigan) and the platform for women has been around for a long, long time.
“There has been a lot of success that women have had in sports, but not justified as equal as the men.
When he came up with this idea a year ago, I said I think it’s a perfect time for that, for equality and what women mean to society, what women accomplish in sports and I think this should be a great start and hopefully this is going to grow really big.”
The afternoon stop at the Saratoga Regional YMCA in Wilton was the first of two gymnastics stops on her itinerary Wednesday. He second stop was at World Class Gymnastics in Latham.
With a team of young teenagers, the success of Nadia Comaneci wasn’t front and center as it was for Smarro, so the team took the time to learn more about the gymnastics icon.
“We started off by watching her 1976 Olympic routines and trying to identify the skills that she was doing and comparing them to what they do now,” Smarro said. “Some of the skills she was the first one to ever do it, she has to skills that are named after her, so we had a lot of fun trying to dissect her routines and show them that ‘Yes, Coach brought back this old-school skill to try, but look, here is an Olympian who did that skill.'”
Another staff member familiar with her legend was two-time Section 2 champion and assistant Coach Tiffany Hogben.
“When Deb told me she was coming I texted my dad and asked if he still had it, a diagram, a visual of your hero when I was in the second grade,” Tiffany Hogben said. “I did a Barbie doll and it was all about Nadia.”
The diagram is long gone, but her memories of Comaneci aren’t.
Comaneci spent the first portion of her hour taking questions from the gymnasts, relating to their concerns about fear, practice time and injuries before taking time to watch several of the Blue Streak stars perform routines on the vault, uneven bars and balance beam.
Senior Laura Eberlein got some familiar, but valuable input from the International Gymnastics Hall of Famer.
Eberlein attempted her beam summersault, unsuccessful at first, but nailed it on the second attempt.
“At first I was like it was a thrill feeling and then at the same time it was the same thing that I’m doing in practice every day, kind of a routine that I’ve been doing for a whole season,” Laura Eberlein said. “It was awesome getting tips from her that helped and she really made it seem like I was doing the right thing. She wasn’t overly judging it, but there were a few niches here and there, so it was cool.”
Comaneci asked her about her thought process during her routine, does she focus on one skill or look ahead to the next one?
She got the answer right and her coach deserves some of the credit too.
“That’s exactly what Coach (Smarro) says too ‘Be in the moment, think about one skill at a time,’ and the flight series together is two skills,” Eberlein said. “Making sure that you’re thinking about one thing at a time really helps make sure you’re doing exactly what you need to and not rushing ahead. If you get ahead of yourself you’re more prone to falling off the beam.”
With some time for autographs, pictures and a gift from the Saratoga Springs gymnastics team in appreciation of her visit, Comaneci had one last Sharpie to grab and leave a permanent reminder of her visit – autographing the side of balance beam with her signature and a ’10’ to commemorate her visit.
The day was another way for her to give back to her sport.
“I was too young to understand the meaning of what I had done when I was 14,” Comaneci said. “I didn’t know when someone came to me when I was 14-, 15- and said ‘Thank you for paving the road for women in sports and thank you for breaking the ice and showing that women can do that. I was too young to understand what that meant. The sport put me equal or better in some things I did more than guys, the sport gave me that platform.
“Later on when I retired and I saw the lack of gender equality and the pay is not the same, then I realized that a lot of things I didn’t know when I was a child. It’s good for them to know that they should stand up for what they believe, they should go there and have passion for what they do and to have courage to speak out and say what they feel and what they believe in.”
Tickets for the inaugural Aurora Games go on sale March 8 on International Women’s Day with more information available at www.auroragamesfestival.com
