New Elise Ray allegations

[Doug1233]

I mean, maybe there will be legit allegations in the future - but really - have we now gone so far down the rabbit hole that we are throwing a coach onto the cancel pile for encouraging healthy eating?

Reading some of the comments is kinda crazy, to me. People are tossing out their old signed photos of Elise. For what? Because she didn’t want the gymnasts to have extra bread with their meals. Because she swapped pasta for quinoa…?

At some point - someone has to stand up and say gymnastics is a dangerous sport, and adding unnecessary weight can do dangerous things. Eating healthily is important from a safety standpoint. It’s not like she’s denying them water! Or starving them! Bread is generally not healthy! There are better more productive carbs out there! She’s not Satan for saying no bread!

Why is Elise being thrown under the bus for this? This kind of hysteria undermines the actual abuse that’s going on in hundreds of gyms all over the world.

Tell me I’m wrong if I’m wrong. But I feel bad for Elise (SUBJECT TO this being the whole extent of the allegations against her).

What do you guys think?

As a side point, I’m actually really disliking the discourse on r/gymnastics. The moderators are so one-minded that any balanced discussion which is welcomed on here is shut down on there without any explanation at all.

 

[Doug1233]

Ok I read a bit more and it seems like the allegations do go further than swapping bread for quinoa. Apparently she asked the psychologist to hand over notes from their private sessions with the gymnasts. That’s a huge NO and a big red flag.

Oh Elise. You’ve got some s’plaining to do…

 

[nog]

Yikes!!! Sounds like a lot more than encouraging healthy eating

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

It does. And even if there were nothing else at all, the behaviour detailed about food is, if true, dodgy. You simply cannot be that controlling, especially not with adults.

What Elise is being accused of here goes well beyond encouraging healthy eating. The coach’s role, or that of whoever is in charge of promoting nutrition in the programme, is to provide advice and set out expectations. That can and should include optimum choices and the potential impact of weight gain on safety and performance. But the athletes themselves are the only ones who should be making the choices about what they eat. If subsequently there is weight gain and it impacts on performance, it’s legitimate for the coach to make decisions on that basis: ie if you gain enough that you can’t safely do your full difficulty any more, I will not allow unsafe skills to be trained and competed in my programme and you may be dropped because you’re now the 9th best on beam when you used to be 4th, or whatever.

But it is not for the coach to say that I am going to decide what you will eat: you have ordered X item but I’m not letting you have it. It just isn’t. They don’t have that right. If the accusation about changing people’s meal orders is true, which obviously we can’t know at this point, that would indicate significant and concerning problems with boundaries.

 

[Big_rock_show]

The food thing doesn’t raise a red flag for me if she was advocating for her gymnasts so there was healthy food available (they didn’t say NO food available!) instead of bread or fries. When I read that, I actually respected Elise.

Asking. Psychiatrist for notes makes me think she was afraid the gymnasts were talking behind her back or not being upfront with her about how they were feeling. Why didn’t she think the athletes trust her? She wouldn’t be asking for them if there was a caring environment on the team. To me, her asking for psychiatric notes appears to be a symptom of a problem.

Misusing money is a tough one. So many unanswered questions. Within the donor funds, was there a budget for extra things? Did she have an expense account? Was that budget line indicated that it was for general use? I get you can’t buy diapers and groceries with that money, but was her use of money outside the set parameters of that budget?

There’s undoubtedly stuff we don’t know about everyone involved, but this situation makes me wonder how much scrutiny is too much? Hurt feelings are real and valid, but also sometimes inevitable. How perfect do coaches need to be in order to maintain high levels of athleticism while promoting safe practices and making athletes feel cared for emotionally? It’s a tough balance.

 

[Doug1233]

@ArnoldRimmer - I agree. But can you imagine the faux outrage on r/gymnastics if she dropped a gymnast from the line up for putting on weight?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Well the dropping shouldn’t be for putting on weight per se. It should be for the negative performance consequences flowing from that. The distinction is important, because if an athlete gains weight but continues to be able to safely compete well enough to merit a place on the team, dropping them would merit criticism.

There might very well be unwarranted criticism if a gymnast were dropped because weight gain meant she was no longer deserving of a lineup place, but honestly, I don’t think that attitude is any less helpful than the suggestion that interfering with grown women’s meal orders is merely encouraging healthy eating.

 

[Doug1233]

Yes of course, I assumed the first paragraph didn’t need to be said.

But maybe Elise doesn’t WANT to have to drop a girl or change the line ups because of this. She has her teams set and she would be pissed if she had to work around it. This is her job! And this is THEIR job! Part of being an elite athlete is about restricting your food. That’s just how it is! You can’t have fries and bread for every meal. Ask any of the millions of athletes worldwide.

She’s not starving them. In fact, they all got food bowls from PANERA! Fuck it, I’m not an athlete but sometimes I throw out the free bread in my sweetgreen bowl because I’m feeling chubby. Throwing Elise under the bus for the food thing (not the other stuff) is just too far, IMO.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

If a coach hypothetically doesn’t want to have a job where she might have to change lineups because someone has taken a course of action she doesn’t want them to take, tough shit. Go and do something else then. She still can’t remove items from their food orders, because it is not up to her. She doesn’t have the right. People aren’t entitled to dispense with appropriate boundaries because they find the consequences of those boundaries invconvenient.

And honestly, you’re strawmanning here. Nobody in this thread has accused her of starving them, and you have no idea whether gymnasts were attempting to eat fries and bread for every meal. Elise is unlikely to have even known that herself.

 

[Doug1233]

Ok, I see where you are and you’re convincing me.

And like I said before, the discourse on HERE is way more nuanced than on r/gymnastics. There’s people burning her autograph on that Reddit rn.

The only thing I find intensely annoying is that the gymternet seems to pile onto issues and snowball them into huge issues when they’re really not THAT bad. Another example is Nina. All the nuance of the discussion is removed and there’s either the “good” pile or the “bad” pile. And everyone piles on. I’m so glad that WWGym (and now here) allows for non-bitchy nuanced debate about these issues, and (largely) avoids the mass cancellation of someone because they didn’t do exactly what the Twitterverse deems appropriate.

On a completely separate, but kinda related, issue, it’s only a matter of time before there is a transwoman competing at elite WAG and the absolute mania that will ensue as a result…

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Thanks. I think the issue here is that we’ve no idea of the veracity of any of this yet, rather than how to assess the behaviour itself if it were true. Yes, some of the responses elsewhere to Nina’s comments have been bad: if her coach is abusive so she’s in the wrong for sticking up for him, she’s also potentially vulnerable to that abusive coach herself and it’s a fact that people in those situations can’t always see it at the time. Especially if they’re of an age where their brain hasn’t finished developing yet.

Do you post on reddit? I’m ArnoldRimmersBeam.

 

[Doug1233]

I posted one message defending Nina and got permabanned. Literally was nothing “worse” than what I said upthread on here. God forbid you stick up for an athlete and believe her when she puts out a statement! It seems like “athletes rights”, “believe her story” and “listening” is only ok when it fits the desired narrative.

I am by no means a Trump supporter or even a Republican, but I can see what people mean when they talk about cancel culture. Particularly online. It’s gotten out of hand. It’s gotten to the point where, for example, if you say “trans women arent biological women” you’re spouting hate speech and you’re responsible for the murder/suicide of thousands of trans people. It’s crazy. If you aren’t in the ultra left wing space then you’re a Nazi murderer.

 

[irichluck21]

Sounds like there are some issues here. But it also sounds a bit petty and also a bit presumptuous as well.
The alleged booster/donor seems to value herself quite highly and reeks of self-importance.

“Second largest donor and largest alumni donor”

“I tried multiple years to talk to her about the importance of giving both seniors and alumni the attention and credit they were due,”

These additional comments make her sound like an angry lady who isn’t getting her own way.

The comments about the psych records are coming from a UW support staff who could be making that up completely. It is not the psychologist stating it, so unless Ray went around complaining about it how would this support staff know. So who knows if that is completely made up. Also sounds like Elise was not happy with this person’s work in their role. Also seems that they are no longer with UW gymnastics.

Just sounds like sour grapes to me with no real evidence.

Also, a coach requesting food changes or modifications doesn’t sound as shady as it is coming across. For all we know some of the gymnasts could have wanted the food changes. Not every college athlete wants french fries, chips, soda, etc. I’ve known plenty of athletes that eat “clean”.

On a personal level, we had a large professional development session, Panera was the scheduled lunch to be catered with a choice of four sandwiches. Plenty of colleagues asked for an option other than chips or bread as the side.
Our society as a whole has become very health conscious in the last 10-15 years. I know parents who have teenage children that are used to eating healthy because that is all they have ever known. You wouldn’t think that a 17 year old would never have eaten any kind of fast food but there is at least one!

Not saying Ray is completely innocent, but no real evidence either. It is suspicious that Ray resigned so abruptly, however. But why the allegations now, 7 months later. You would think this alumni donor would have stated something much earlier based on the obvious personal dislike of Ray.

 

[irichluck21]

Also apparently one of the athletes that was dismissed from the team by Ray is subject to other teammates criticism. McNamara claimed she was the top scorer for the team (she wasn’t) and another gymnast stated that McNamara was a toxic teammate.

If multiple teammates felt the same way, no wonder Ray dismissed her.

This isn’t the first or last instance of an athlete not meshing with the rest of the team.

 

[nog]

I thought this McNamara was just recently taken off roster…if that is the case, how is Ray responsible for dismissing her?

 

[irichluck21]

That is what I thought but one of the comments in that thread stated something about it. I must have read it incorrectly.

 

[JoseM]

Doug, I agree. It is indeed a NO and red flag. If you are in therapy with a psychologist or psychiatrist, what you discuss with your therapist is PRIVATE, and it aint nobody’s business but yours. Nobody has any right to ask “Why are you in therapy ?”, nor any other personal questions. It truly upsets me when someone tries to start a conversation asking personal questions. Asking personal questions is a lack of etiquette , and an inapropriate conversation. “How much do you earn ?” “Are you working, employed ?” “By what nickname do your parents call you ?” Such personal questions really p*** me up !! Some people have no respect for boundaries, and don’t keep a respectful distance, and that upsets me !

If it is true that Elise wants those private records from the psychologist, then I am truly stunned.

José M.

 

[XMaestro]

Just sounds like sour grapes to me with no real evidence.

I can’t believe we’ve gone through everything we have in the past 4-5 years and this is an actual response to this.

There are at least two people speaking out with direct knowledge of this stuff, one of whom actually did the Panera order and got yelled at (in front of the team) for Panera accidentally putting bread in.

What more evidence do you need? This is a very detailed story for someone to make up years later because they’re salty.

Also sounds like Elise was not happy with this person’s work in their role. Also seems that they are no longer with UW gymnastics.

Also sounds like this person was not okay with being yelled at in public. Also seems like they left after recognizing UW gymnastics was a toxic environment.

 

[XMaestro]

She’s not. McNamara was a walk-on Freshman.

 

[irichluck21]

Get a grip. You are being overly dramatic with the “everything in the past 4-5 years”.

The Panera account is someone’s perspective and viewpoint of the scenario. It is in no means any solid piece of evidence other than someone’s story.

If someone was not doing their job properly and constantly mucking up, I too would be upset and might even give a yell. People yell at other people all the time. Doesn’t make it right, but it happens.

And yeah, I would need a LOT more evidence than some Panera story to make a judgement.

And I wouldn’t call that alumni/donor someone with direct knowledge. Seems to be more accusatory than fact based. Someone was clearly unhappy at Elise Ray because she, as the donor, was not having more control over things. If you can’t get that from reading their own words then I don’t know what else to tell you.