A specialist made the Olympic team. Stephen Nedoroscik is a specialist who only did pommel horse. What makes things more crazy is he has terrible vision so he did his routines mostly blind. Men’s gymnastics is something a small amount of people know about, surprisingly. Some people don’t even know it exists. It’s a common misconception that only girls do gymnastics; that’s not true. Men do it too. It might be more entertaining to watch men depending on personal preference. Men and women’s gymnastics are quite different. In the past couple years boys gymnastics was added to Northfield Gymnastics Club “ It was a great addition” said Daylen, a gymnast from NGC. Current and past Cannon Falls students have been members of this club.

Men’s gymnastics consists of six events, two of which girls do too. The men perform rings, pommel horse, parallel bars, high bar, vault and floor. From that list girls do vault and floor except floor for men and women look a little different; girls have music for their floor routine and men don’t. Men’s routines are just tumbling with a few other elements to them. The women also do vault, (the men and women basically do the same thing on vault just with different skills). The men do parallel bars and high bar which sound similar but they are very different. On high bar there is one bar that is made out of steel. Men do quite a few release skills over them. Parallel bars, (also known as P-bars) are two wooded bars close to shoulder width apart. Rings are for the most part two wooden rings typically hanging on two wires down from the ceiling. The pommel horse is basically a big block off the ground with two handles on it.

In men’s gymnastics there are a couple main differences with advanced gymnasts and beginners. If someone is a beginner instead of using pommel horse they will typically  use a piece of equipment called a mushroom. It is basically a round table like structure with a round padded top, but not all mushrooms are the exact same. When a gymnast is learning how to do p bars they will put two blocks on either side of the bars so if they fall to the side they will land on the blocks. The last big difference is that young athletes will use a stack of soft mats instead of a hard vault table.

At  Northfield Gymnastics Club, (also known as NGC), all of the team boys practice together, skill does not matter because NGC doesn’t have enough boys to split up. There is a team prep which is different than on the team. In team prep boys will do skills they will need in order to get on the team, even though at NGC all the team boys practice together. However they may change soon. The team prep is pretty big and there is a toddler type class so hopefully in the near future they will have more than one team. Emily Hooker says “They need more boys that are interested in gymnastics, and I am excited for them to get more space in the near future!” During a meet it looks a little different. The boys on the team get outfits that they all wear to the competitions. At competitions they only get one try on each event with the exception of vault. When someone competes on vault they get two tries and the better score will be the one they officially get.

If someone is interested in signing up they can go to the Northfield Gymnastics Club website. On the website it also lists the special events such as camps and other special events such as the Halloween haunted houses or other events similar to that. There are two builds for NGC; one is the main gym and the other is called Tumble Bugs. Tumble Bugs is for the really little kids like babies and toddlers. The main gym is for older kids. With that being said the boys mainly practice in the main gym; the only ones that practice in the Tumble Bugs gym are typically  four years old and under. NGC is located in Northfield. If women’s gymnastics is of interest someone might be surprised on how much they like gymnastics. If someone shows interest, sign them up for a beginners class and give it a try. They can find more information on the Northfield Gymnastics Club website. They can always use more athletes.