UCLA, Alexis Jeffery, gymnasts calling out athletic director

[GLeigh]

Sorry, this is a bit long, and I haven’t actually seen these rumours, but I don’t really get why this is so easy to believe? I think if any information given in the podcast was factually incorrect, it would’ve gotten out. As far as I remember, Margzetta specifically stated that she didn’t think she needed to have the one-on-one meeting with Chris, because she wasn’t involved which doesn’t strike me as very diva-ish. Also, Norah apparently hosted everyone at her place so everyone could voice their thoughts regarding the situation, which doesn’t strike me as something a bully would do. I think most also agree that Chris being gone, which was their main goal, is a good thing and that the team was splintering under his leadership this year.

I agree that the whole situation was likely very complicated, but that doesn’t mean that more people need to be cast as bad guys. Norah, and likely Margzetta, are going to be gone next year, so I think if their side of the story was missing key aspects or was overly biased, we would’ve seen more signatures. The ones we saw make sense given the current information. Emily, Emma, and Ana all come from an elite environment where good relationships with coaches and with the sport in general are less common. It’s possible they don’t even think that he handled the situation perfectly, but they just need to think he had a positive effect on their personal experiences and agreed with what seemed to be his plan of putting it behind them and moving on. It also makes sense that the other years largely didn’t sign because they wouldn’t have been friends with AJ, but also because if they had felt close to Chris they might’ve felt more let down than the freshmen who didn’t have the time to develop high expectations. Paige is a Waller’s GymJam alum and probably had great experiences with him through her whole childhood like most people who went there did.

 

[JaJa]

1000% get Regina George vibez from the both of them.

Oh whatever. I’m getting cheese fries.

 

[QuietColours]

I don’t think I’m at all comfortable with making determinations on who the mean girls and bullies were in this. It’s fairly clear that is was a complex situation, heavily dependent on interpersonal dynamics on the team, and that we are missing information. It seems likely that the UCLA athletics department didn’t handle the situation well, and that a certain percentage of the team felt betrayed by Waller and a certain percentage felt he did well. We don’t know exactly what happened–to my knowledge, no one on the team has come out to give any counterpoints to specific charges from Marz and Sekai, but we honestly have no idea why. They could have been told to keep quiet or lose their place on the team, they could agree, they could not want to cross the older athletes, they could have been asked by a teammate in a vulnerable position not to say anything, dozens of other motivations.

We know that Waller was unable to reunite the team after the split. We don’t know details as to what his actions were and how much his hands were tied by the regulations of the athletics departments (and how much of that was in good faith). It does seem clear that he probably would have continued to have trouble unifying the team, and that the strife of the year had a significant negative impact on many of the athletes and on team performance.

So I’m really not comfortable with turning around and calling Margzetta and Norah mean girls or bullies now. We have no reason to believe that they weren’t acting in good faith when they went public with their issues with the program–and if they were, that doesn’t mean that what they did may not have been very hurtful to some of their teammates. Some bad things definitely happened and were handled badly, and it seems clear we’re missing some significant complexity to what that is. I don’t think trying to assign definitive bad guy labels is really benefiting anyone, especially given the overall paucity of information.