The year was 1972. Kelly Clevenger was a 6-year-old girl living in Plymouth, Mich. She remembers sitting in front of the television watching the Summer Olympics, when 17-year-old Olga Korbut took the floor with three dazzling gymnastics routines.
Korbut, a petite girl of 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighing only 84 pounds, leaped up onto the uneven bars and twirled herself from one to the other, often faster than the eye could keep up. She sprang across the balance beam with the grace of a ballerina, and cartwheeled, backflipped and tumbled from one end of the floor to the other.
Korbut earned two gold medals for her balance beam and floor exercises, as well as a silver medal for her uneven bars performance. But, she won much more than that — the hearts of young girls around the world who rushed to join gymnastics clubs and teams.
One of those girls was Clevenger, who has been gymnastics director at Greenfield’s YMCA for 16 years. In awe of Korbut’s performance, a young Clevenger aspired to be like her idol and as she fell in love with the sport, wanted to pass on what she had learned to others.
“It was so cool to see how they could move their bodies,” Clevenger said of watching the professional gymnasts. “It’s been my passion ever since.”
Clevenger arrived at Greenfield’s YMCA in 2001 as an assistant coach for Cyndy Mansur. She became head coach in 2004.
She has aimed not only to add fun aspects to the gymnastics program, but to help mold the young girls and boys she teaches into responsible young adults.
The YMCA offers 10 levels of gymnastic coaching, an XCEL program, summer camp, parent-child classes and preschool classes.
Five- and 6-year-old gymnasts get started with very basic routines in levels one through three. Level four is the last of the compulsory levels, where every student completes the same routines.
Those gymnasts who stick with the program long enough to move through levels six to 10 can work with their coaches to choreograph their own routines.
In the traditional program, younger students train two to three times per week, and older students train four times per week. Children who don’t have the same level of time to commit, but are still passionate about gymnastics, can practice twice a week through the YMCA’s XCEL program.
The XCEL program, as well as levels four and up of the traditional program, are open to children ages eight to 18.
What separates the YMCA’s program from clubs, Clevenger said, is the cost to its students.
“Gymnastics can be a very expensive sport,” she said. “If we do it at the Y, we can make it affordable … We try to keep our costs down as low as possible.”
The YMCA offers a sliding fee scale for families of ranging incomes, and Clevenger said she can offer used workout clothing for students who want to be on the YMCA’s team, the Tumbling Tigers.
To be a Tumbling Tiger, each student needs a gym bag with their name, a performance leotard, warm-up pants and a warm-up shirt, which features the team’s name on the back. And of course, they need to have a true love for gymnastics.
Currently, there are 43 Tumbling Tigers, and many have been quite successful in their gymnastics pursuits. Clevenger said for the past six years, the team has sent members to the YMCA National Gymnastics Championships.
“I’ve consistently had at least one or two in the top six in their session,” she said, explaining that each session is made up of between 50 and 60 competitors, with different levels competing at different times.
Each Tumbling Tiger trains and competes on the uneven bars, vault, balance beam and floor. During their classes at the YMCA, the students participate in mock meets to prepare for competition.
“It helps the kids see what they’re going to expect when they get in there,” Clevenger said. “It eases their nerves.”
In order to qualify, each student must achieve a certain all around score twice within a season. For example, level three competitors must receive 34 points, and level six competitors must receive 31 points, because their routines are a bit more challenging, Clevenger explained.
Over the past several years, Clevenger’s team has traveled to Tampa, Fla., Savannah, Ga., Wichita, Kan. and San Diego, Calif. to compete.
This year, the competition was held in Long Beach, Calif. from June 30 to July 2, and Clevenger sent three competitors: Allyson and Sydney Unaitis, both level six, and Tatum Morse, level three.
Clevenger said more than 2,000 children and teenagers from over 200 gyms in 21 states competed at the 2016 national championships.
Morse,11, placed seventh on the floor and uneven bars, second on the balance beam and sixth all around. Sydney Unaitis, 14, was ninth on the vault, seventh on the beam, and 10th on the floor and all around. Allyson Unaitis, 12, was 10th on the bars.
“Our expectation is not really that they’re going to place,” said Dana Unaitis, mother of Sydney and Allyson. “Our expectation is that they enjoy the experience, but placing is the icing on the cake.”
“(Nationals is) really about your development as an individual, your development as a team,” said Josh Morse, Tatum’s father. “It’s not that you have to be in first place, but did you do the best that you could.”
All the competitors parents echoed how proud they are of their children, and how proud their children are of themselves.
“She’s really proud of herself,” said Gretchen Morse, Tatum Morse’s mother. “She was really proud of Allyson and Sydney who joined her, and even though they’re at different levels, they were there to support each other and cheer each other on.”
Gretchen Morse emphasized the feeling of community and mutual support she felt while at nationals, as she watched a team from the Midwest cheer on her daughter.
“She was the only one in her group from Greenfield, whereas the other girls had other teammates in their group,” Gretchen Morse said. “It was really nice of them.”
Clevenger explained that usually between 10 and 20 of her pupils compete in the national competition each year, but that distance is often an obstacle. Thirty-five of her students qualified to compete in 2016.
Because next year’s nationals are in Savannah, Clevenger hopes more of her students will have the opportunity to go.
“The experience alone is really worth it,” Clevenger continued. “They do it big. They do opening ceremonies like you’d see at the Olympics.”
Misty May-Treanor, a retired American professional beach volleyball player and three-time Olympic goal medalist, delivered the keynote address.
“Listening to Misty May-Treanor as our keynote speaker was great, it was inspiring,” Clevenger said. “She spoke about the values of visualization, keeping your focus and how winning or losing doesn’t define you.”
Clevenger described how each year the competion has a theme, with 2016’s theme being glow-in-the-dark. All the competitors and their supporters wore neon outfits and glowsticks to light up the stadium. Clevenger’s competitors all wore bright orange Tumbling Tigers T-shirts.
“It really doesn’t matter if they place,” Clevenger said, echoing the views of her students’ parents. “It’s really important to me that they get to see other places around them and meet new kids.”
While competition provides great opportunities for Clevenger’s students, she said that gymnastics teaches the physical strengths of balance and flexibility, as well as self-confidence, organization and how to work our their frustrations.
“I believe those are the best things I could have taught them that they can use in everyday life,” Clevenger said.
“I always have been a quiet, shy person, so (gymnastics has) taught me to be more confident in myself and my skills, whether it’s school or sports,” said Kellie Beres, 21, of Greenfield, a former Tumbling Tiger who later became a YMCA gymnastics coach.
For best friends Nora Roscoe, 18, of Sunderland and Kayla Hamer, 18, of Deerfield, doing gymnastics at the YMCA has taught them perseverence.
“I’ve definitely learned how to deal with failure,” said Roscoe, who has been participating in the YMCA’s gymnastics program since 2008. “You fall down a lot in gymnastics, but it’s a lot about how you pick yourself up and how you present yourself next time.”
“It’s really taught me time management (between homework, sports and school), how to get along with a team and how to overcome your fears,” said Hamer, who started gymnastics when she was 6 and has been a Tumbling Tiger for 10 years. “I have generalized anxiety disorder (so) I was just very scared of learning new skills (and) it was always a big deal to me when I got a new one.”
Dana Unaitis said that gymnastics has taught her daughters not to give in when the going gets tough.
“They have to go through some grit, and gymnastics has taught them to power through things that are difficult,” Unaitis said. “I think they’re going to need that as they get older, to persevere when things are difficult, to work through when they don’t do so well.”
Watching her students succeed at something that has challenged them is one of Clevenger’s favorite parts of her job.
“The greatest thing I see is the first time they get a skill right,” Clevenger said, describing how she loves to see her students’ eyes light up with excitement and pride in themselves.
Dana Unaitis added that her daughters have gained mental and physical strength and skills that have transferred to other sports that they play, like field hockey, track, softball and soccer.
“They are mental toughness,” Josh Morse said of the Greenfield YMCA’s Tumbling Tigers.
Above everything else, Clevenger feels she and the other coaches are there to lend support to the children.
“I feel really strongly that we’re more here to be mentors and click with kids,” she said, adding that she strives to get to know each student so that they “can feel like they’re a part of something and not just another gymnast.”
“Kelly has been basically like my mom,” Hamer said. “I’ve grown up with her in the gym.”
Clevenger also recognizes that her students come from diverse and sometimes troubled backgrounds, and wants to create a safe space for them.
“This is a place where they can come and, once they walk through that door, they can shut it all out,” she said.
In addition to having Clevenger and the other coaches as a support system, Clevenger said her students gain meaningful friendship through the gymnastics program.
“A lot of them have made friends that will last a lifetime,” she said.
“Kids that wouldn’t necessarily be put together in social circles get to jell very well together (through the team),” Josh Morse said. “They’re very much a team. A lot of them will ride to the meet together, they’ll get together outside of the gym.”
Roscoe noticed the Greenfield YMCA’s friendy atmosphere when she first began doing gymnastics there instead of at the Hampshire Gymnastics School in Amherst, where she had been for two years prior.
“I like doing gymnastics because it’s fun and it doesn’t feel like you’re working out. You’re doing a fun activity with your friends,” she said. “That’s not the case everywhere. At some gyms, it’s a lot more about competition. At the Y, it’s about feeling good about yourself and supporting your teammates.”
