Last semester, I did my final project for my Geographic Information Systems class on what I called the “Geographic Origin of Human Capital in American Women’s Gymnastics” — in other words, where do the top gymnasts, coaches and clubs come from? It was a very fun project.
To begin, I downloaded the list provided by USA Gymnastics of every single junior and senior national team member from 1982 to 2023. Then, by combing through bios on the USAG website, college rosters and even newspaper articles if necessary, I added information about gymnasts’ hometowns, club that year, coach[es] that year and coaches’ hometowns to create a giant dataset to convert to a form that I could plot on a map. I only looked at athletes who had been on the junior or senior team at least one time.
So, where do the top athletes in the United States come from? Where are the most prominent gyms?
The gymnasts on the national team have truly come from all over the country. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them came from places where there were excellent gyms nearby, but the diversity of hometowns among the top athletes was remarkable. Still, nine states have never had an athlete on the national team: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont and Wyoming. Some of these make sense (there’s not many high level gyms near North Dakota, Wyoming or Alaska, for example), but I was shocked to see Alabama on the list. The University of Alabama has an excellent gymnastics program, and, like in much of the South, gymnastics is very popular there.
I was also surprised to see Rhode Island on the list — a gymnast in Rhode Island could have easily moved an hour away to Boston to train at Beyond Gymnastics (formerly Brestyan’s). While gymnasts may begin at a local gym in their hometown, historically many have moved across the country to train at what are considered the “top” gyms. Though almost every state had produced a gymnast on the national team, much fewer states actually have a gym that the athlete trained at.
This led me to the next section — where are the top gyms? I ranked each gym’s “prominence” by the number and longevity of athletes they had put on the national team. The top five most prominent gyms in the United States since 1982 were as follows: Parkettes in Allentown, Pa.; World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Plano and Frisco, Texas; Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy in Fairfield, Ohio; Great American Gymnastics Express in Blue Springs, Mo.; and Karolyi Gymnastics in Houston, Texas.
Parkettes, World Olympics Gymnastics Academy, Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy and Great American Gymnastics Express gymnastics are all still actively producing gymnasts on the national team these days, whereas many of the other top gyms over that period have moved into the background since the 90’s and 2000’s. The newer World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas is a new addition to the ranks of top gyms; though it has not been around long enough to make the top 10, many elites are flocking to the gym. Out of the whole country, Texas is the hotspot for gymnastics right now — like I wrote about in a previous column, a huge portion of the current national team trains in Texas.
