By the time Deana Martinez was three years old, “I was climbing all over everything,” she says. “So my mom put me in gymnastics.”
She thrived in the sport, and as a teenager started coaching as well as competing. She’s now been coaching for 30 years and owns Edmond Gymnastics Academy, where her students start as young as 18 months in the parent and tot classes, and often go on to compete at the collegiate level.
Martinez is head coach of a team that competes in club gymnastics, traveling to meets from December through May. The training is rigorous.
“They sacrifice a lot,” she says. “Most have to work out a minimum of four and a half hours a day, at least five days a week. Some do two-a-days.”
But there is a payoff.
Martinez says as she reflected on the women she competed with and against, “I realized that these women are very successful, and gymnastics has been the vehicle. I realized that the women that come out of gymnastics can pretty much accomplish anything they want to accomplish.”
Gymnastics, she says, “sets a child up for success in everything, including life. It helps with time management and goal setting.”
Her training helps kids who compete in other sports, Martinez says.
“For any sport they will be stronger, have better balance. The foundation of gymnastics leads to excelling in every sport.”
Her students usually know by their pre-teen years if they want to continue to the competitive level.
“Gymnastics has fear,” she acknowledges. “Because you are going to jump backwards on a beam. You need a certain amount of power and flexibility, and some of those things are genetic.”
Edmond Gymnastics competitors have earned scholarships to colleges across the nation. And the programs at the University of Oklahoma play a role in enthusiasm for the sport, even if not a lot of Oklahoma gymnasts are able to compete for their home state.
“OU has to recruit some percentage out of Oklahoma, but they are taking the very top in the nation,” Martinez says.
OU has won 12 national championships, tied for the most nationally, says Mike Houck, senior associate athletic director for the university.
“Since 2000, the Sooners have claimed nine NCAA team titles, 19 conference championships, 278 All-Americans and 41 individual national titles. Combine that with multiple Olympians and the most Nissen-Emery winners all-time, and you have the country’s premiere college program,” Houck says.
The women have racked up seven national championships. OU has advanced to the NCAA championships every year since 2004 and has produced a total of 136 individual conference champions, 227 NCAA All-Americans and 22 individual national champions all-time, Houck says.
Michael Kimball, an OU graduate, says his family started attending gymnastics meets after joining the Sooner Kids Club.
“The women’s gymnastics meets are definitely a favorite for both of my girls, and my wife and I love them too,” Kimball says. “The atmosphere is super family-friendly. There’s tons of action, and obviously the student-athletes are at the peak of their sport, including some former Olympic medalists we’ve seen compete in Norman.”
As a father of daughters, Kimball says, “one of the most important things to me is that there are thousands of fans in the stands — my daughters will grow up knowing it’s totally normal for thousands of paying fans to be at a women’s sporting event.”
Kimball says when they attended a women’s basketball game at Lloyd Noble Center for the first time, his older daughter asked, “Oh, does OU play basketball in the gymnastics arena?”
