Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams

[QuietColours]

Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams
By Jennifer Sey - no ghost writer credited
Copyright 2008

A couple notes here. In previous threads, I've tried to note at the top of the chapter summaries if the chapter mentioned things like disordered eating. For this book, assume all chapters discuss disordered eating. It's extremely prominent. I'll still try to note discussions of self harm and mentions of people I know to have sexual assault accusations.

She gives years more often than ages, so for reference Jen was born in 1969.

Foreword

• Details a call between Jennifer Sey and Mike Jacki, the head of USAG, twenty years after she retired, asking her to come back for a competition in a year
  • Forces him to beg her to come back
  • Has to lose weight, can't do anything on bars
  • Can't do it
  • Wakes up–it's just a dream
• Wrestles with her time as a gymnast
  • It was the main time in her life when she was that special (other than being a mom, and even the worst mothers are irreplaceable to their kids)
  • When life's options are unclear or unappealing, gymnastics seems like the obvious choice
    • Decisions were uncomplicated; she did it because it was what she did
    • The dream reminds her of all the destructive and unhappy parts–physical pain, light-headedness and hunger, the emotional deprivation of losing the only thing she'd ever known
• Not meant as an indictment of the sport–Jen was born highly competitive with near-manic ambition, which can morph into self destruction
  • Gymnastics was the first place
  • 3.8 GPA wasn't good enough in college
  • Determined to be a VP before age 40
  • Son sometimes wants Daddy, not Mommy
  • In constant psychic motion to beat herself. If it hadn't been gymnastics, it would have been something else
• Had to explain the gap year between HS and college to people–"I was trying to make the Olympics." "Did you?" "No."
• Had 1986 US National Gymnastics Champion in the "Other" section on her resume invokes questions, but also helped her get her first job (interviewed by a former college football player)
• Wrote a fictional screenplay, then a made a short film–neither satisfied, so she wrote the whole book
• Had fun and then she didn't; lost and then won and then lost again; starved and ate and thought she'd never stop, but she did

1986

• Waiting to go on bars when she hears a gasp and sees that Hope Spivy has fallen on beam. She was Jen's last challenger for the title. Now she has to finish a routine with no real chance of winning
• 10s are rarely given anymore. Her bar routine starts out a 9.9. She cracks her toes, runs her tongue across a self-inflicted canker sore, checks the chalk on her hands. She does not wear grips, preferring hands to bars–she doesn't trust the bar is still there when she wears grips. Because of this, she rips more frequently when calluses tear. She has a rip now, sanded and smoothed with a nail file and packed with chalk
• The judge gives her the salute. She knows she's won. She won't miss, she will win. She becomes the 1986 National Champion

1972- 1979

Chapter 1

• Turkey
  • Learned to do a cartwheel when she was 3 years old. They lived on an air force base in Turkey. Her 13 year old neighbor/babysitter taught her. Being able to do a cartwheel when most kids her age couldn't made her feel special
  • Went to Turkey on the Berry Plan in fall 1972, at the end of the Vietnam War. After residency, her father had to serve two years as a physician to avoid combat. He requested a remote assignment that would allow him to take his family. Became a pediatrician in the air force base near Istanbul.
  • Mom had envisioned a more traditional life as a doctor's wife in a suburban neighborhood after putting him through med school working in a lab and was 7 months pregnant with her second child when they left. They lived in a trailer on arriving until they were assigned housing. Young Jen liked the trailer because everything was in miniature, scaled to her
  • In December they got housing and her mom was airlifted to the nearest birthing hospital in Ankara. Came home just before Christmas with younger brother Christopher. Had no long distance telephone service, so they sent audiotapes to her grandmother in Atlantic City and sent pictures of Jen. Her grandmother wrote back scolding her Jewish parents for naming her brother after Christ and saying Jen looked like Joey Heatherton.
  • Loved doing cartwheels down the hill in the backyard. She'd have her mom come watch, but she was mostly left alone to play by herself, coming home at dusk for dinner. Jen would make pretzel-and-cheese salad (torn up processed yellow cheese on pretzel sticks), which her parents indulgently let her serve with every dinner
  • Made her own decisions and lived with the consequences–wore a raincoat in very cold weather, was cold. Said she wanted all the broccoli in the bowl, she had to eat it. Heavily inspired by Dr. Spock
• Back to the States
  • Returned to the states in 1974 and moved in with her grandmother in Atlantic City. Nannie was compulsively clean and particular about the placement of her knickknacks
  • When Jen wanted a decorative plate for her post-dinner cookies, her grandmother was flattered she'd noticed it and got a stepladder out to get it down. Her mother tried to get her to say she didn't want it and her grandmother needn't go through that much trouble, but Jen did want it and didn't see why people shouldn't oblige her
  • Television fascinated her when she got back to the US–would watch Merv Griffon and Dinah shore. Watched with her Uncle Bobby, her mother's youngest brother who was born with Down's syndrome in 1952 when her mother was ten and her Aunt Jill was five. After he was born, he became her grandmother's sole focus, with the older girls an afterthought. Friends were not permitted to come over, because in the 50s it was an embarrassment to have a disabled child
  • After a few weeks, her grandmother asked them to leave–the chaos of two small children was too much. She preferred things neat and quiet and calm consistency was important to Bobby's care, and that isn't possible with a toddler and preschooler.
• Their own home
  • Moved to a ranch house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Her father did a stint in endocrinology at Saint Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia before setting up his own office in NE Philly. The new practice, hospital moonlighting, and hour commute kept him very busy. Her mother happily settled into her role as a doctor's wife.
  • Lawn was big enough for cartwheels and they had their own television where she could watch what she wanted. Liked to watch ABC's Wide World of Sports–Olga Korbut became her hero. Loved Nellie Kim and Ludmilla Tourischeva too, but Olga was her favorite. Before Olga, gymnastics was dominated by grown women. Olga was fearless, doing the first back flip on the balance beam and the Korbut Flip on bars. First release move ever performed by a female gymnast on bars.
  • All the little girls of the 1970s wanted to be Olga, until Nadia came along.
  • Glued to the 1976 Olympics, watched the first 10 and the 6 other 10.0s. Olga only got a single team gold–she was already over the hill. It was a continuation of the sport being for young girls. Jen was 7 years old already and needed to hurry up and get going if 14 was the magic age for being a champion
• Starting Gymnastics
  • Was already enrolled in a weekly 1 hour class at The Gymnastics Academy in Cherry Hill. She demanded a 3-day-a-week class and her mother agreed. All the parents were enamored with Olga and Nadia and Cathy Rigby, the first American to win a world medal. She was proof democracy and capitalism could produce world class athletes and her Peter Pan success was more evidence America was better than Communist Eastern Europe
  • Jen watched all the tv specials dedicated to Nadia and determined she also needed ballet classes–dance was a critical part of Nadia's training in Onesti. Jen signed up for gymnastics and ballet in the name of recreation. For the most part
  • Had no real understanding of the work and sacrifice required for the glory of elite sports, nor did her parents. They thought she was special like all parents think their kids are special–maybe she'd do high school gymnastics and do some state competitions. Olympic medals were dreams for other people, Eastern Europeans who needed a champion to ensure there was food on the table
  • By first grade, was also developing a sense of inadequacy. Did an art class at the local Jewish Community Center as something to do. She did a poor job drawing a dog, and refused to go back the next week because she wasn't good at art. The lack of praise from her teacher shamed her
  • In a visit to DC with her dad, she informed him she was good at math. First grade addition and subtraction were easy for her. Her father told her girls aren't good at math, they're better at language arts. He believed this to be a scientific, factual statement as a doctor. The lack of encouragement felt like ridicule
  • She enjoyed singing, but she was a terrible singer. One day her aunt commented that to her mother, and told Jen not to take up music
  • Jen stood out in gymnastics class and was acknowledged by the teacher as "the best one." She was called on to demonstrate skills. She got similar praise in ballet. She was pleased with herself and smug but aware she shouldn't gloat too much. The purpose of being good at something was to make people like and admire her.

 

[IratePanda]

Thanks again for doing this!

I forgot the book had such a long title. At least no one can accuse Sey of burying the lede.

 

[MaryClare]

I remember reading this around the time it was published. It was interesting, and much of what she hinted at turned out to be true. But I felt it was a very self indulgent book

 

[RichardL]

But I felt it was a very self indulgent book

This part does not surprise me at all.