History of the Gymternet

[SJPLPC]

Started out with the GTTC*, made some lasting friendships, and OOBness. Honestly any gymnerd site I could find. It was all undiscovered territory. I remember one with mock competitions where I won a leotard design contest.
Then GGMB, but only briefly. Man that place was AWFUL.
Wondered around sad for a while then found wwgym.

*Pretty sure my local post office thought I had a porn business going.

 

[SJPLPC]

The GTTC…I remember it fondly because I started it. I think it was 1995 or so. Loved running the site and am amazed at how much has changed since then. Now we have YouTube and various other sites to watch competitions. An entirely different world.

Love the porn biz comment. lol! I’m pretty sure they all thought we were doing that.

 

[OnlyBeansOnToast]

Is this the right place to admit that I avoid ChalkBucket as I'm scared of all the deranged parents who are convinced their five-year-old daughter is destined for great things and can't understand why their coaches don't see this and insist on teaching them how to do a forward roll properly instead of packing them off direct to an Olympic training centre?

 

[barbara_dewey]

The first You Tube video I ever saw was Nadia's 1976 Compulsory Bars.
I was on a gymnastics listserv in the mid-1990s. Also a yahoo gymnastics group. Then, I found Gymn_Forum, and I still use her Results data all the time.
Then, I found OOBNESS, which I absolutely LOVED. Particularly fun was the chat rooms during nationals, worlds, and Olympics. Great times! My screen name was Human Flight.
I never liked GGMB.
GTTC was WONDERFUL, though!
After OOBNESS went down, I wandered through Gymnworld, TAAF, and a couple of others. Since then, I enjoy YouTube of course, and the livestreaming when it works, but I miss the board days and the friendships we formed. I also miss having decent live scoring.

 

[Bogwoppit]

Is this the right place to admit that I avoid ChalkBucket as I'm scared of all the deranged parents who are convinced their five-year-old daughter is destined for great things and can't understand why their coaches don't see this and insist on teaching them how to do a forward roll properly instead of packing them off direct to an Olympic training centre?

As an ex mod, and ex admin of the CB, I can confess it is that that ended me. But that is really the target market, so it is what it is. Over the years some of those parents nearly ruined the board, you would be shocked at the shenanigans folk got up to, especially when it came to their kids.

Thankfully @falcon9 started this site, with the other friendly admins, and here we are, a whole other world.

 

[rlayt]

Gym parents! Remember that a parent had their van painted with their daughter’s image. And that isn’t the worst.

 

[RedBirdie]

That was Kristie Phillips' mom!

 

[OnlyBeansOnToast]

Gym parents! Remember that a parent had their van painted with their daughter’s image. And that isn’t the worst.

In the sport my eldest kid does (very much not gymnastics) there's one family who have a van with a life-sized photo of the their son on the back. But the picture was taken when he was nine, and now he's about 14, and every time I see it I find myself wondering how much he must die inside every time his dad drops him off at school.