The Becker Bulldog girls gymnastics team will have two seniors and one junior on their squad this year, leading to dire need for their youngsters to step up and fill some holes.
“Our two seniors, Miranda O'Brien and Lindsay Olsen, are both returning all-around competitors,” said Head Coach Jen Harmoning. “So we will definitely be expecting them to lead our young squad.”
Harmoning is really looking forward to seeing where junior Emi Quill, who was a varsity bar worker for the team last year, her progression takes her.
“We'll be needing her (Quill) to move into the line-ups in other events as well this year,” said Harmoning. “We have a lot of slots to fill in the line-up with new faces. I think it will take us some time to settle into new roles this season, but it should be exciting to see who emerges.”
Harmoning has two new coaches on her team who are both graduates of Becker High School and former members of past gymnastics teams. One is Kayla (McCall) Kalinowski, who fills the shoes of her younger sister, Kelly and the other is Sheena (Rittenour) Meillier.
“We are very excited to have them here with us this year,” said the head coach.
Jesse Wiley returns as the team’s spotter.
Harmoning said the coaching responsibilities will mesh with Jen doing the paperwork, communication and planning and Kalinowski and Meillier helping with the planning.
“ If there are problems, we work out a solution together,” Harmoning said. “When we're at practice, we usually each take an event that day and work with all the kids. With two new coaching team members, we're still working things out.”
Harmoning says she still enjoys coaching, though she says at times it gets somewhat difficult to manage to keep up with teaching and coaching now that her own children are getting really busy with the activities they love to do.
“I have thought about taking some time off from coaching but so far I haven't been able to go through with it,” she said. “I know I wouldn't want to be away for good, but the time might come when I can just no longer give up being a part of my own kids' activities for it. We'll see.”
“Like coaching any high school sport, it takes a lot of time,” she said. “Coaches certainly are not doing what they do because they want to make a lot of money.”
Jen says she thinks she kept track of her time she put into coaching one year about 20 years ago just for the fun of it and realized she made around 27¢ an hour or so.
“I probably put in one-to-two hours per day during the week outside of practice or meets and usually over the weekend I do a bigger, two-to-three hour session just once. Most Saturdays during the season we have tournaments and those start early in the morning and go until later in the afternoon.”
Though she is working hard to be the best coach she can, she says she doesn’t really consider it work, though.
“Because I'm really enjoying it,” she said. “The only thing I feel bad about is the time away from my family. I miss almost all of my boys' basketball tournaments and that is really, really hard.”
Jen’s husband, Chris, is the one who is usually called upon to get all the kids to wherever they need to go. He also coaches their son's basketball team, all the while looking after their four-year-old.
“I'm looking forward to my daughter being old enough to handle a long day of gymnastics so she can come with me to our meets,” she said.
Jen’s athletes over the years have long been devoted, hard-working and loyal to the program. The coaches work with the young ladies and determine their best traits to be successful in the program.
“They need to have a strong work ethic,” she said. “They need to be able to manage themselves and their time so that they are able to be busy with school, sports, and all else and basically thrive on that kind of life.”
Harmoning says high-level gymnasts usually enjoy the process of setting a goal and working to achieve it.
“They sure do need to be resilient,” she says. “This sport is so tough, even at the high school level. They really need to love gymnastics because it is a huge time-user and you really can't take a break from training for very long, so they have to be willing to make sacrifices sometimes.”
The talent is there. It’s up to the coaching staff to quickly and earnestly develop them to be ready for the upcoming season.
