Susan Reinhardt

 

Acclaimed author of "Not Tonight Honey, Wait 'til I'm a Size 6" Susan Reinhardt has recently released her latest book, "Don't Sleep with a Bubba Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs."

For more information on Reinhardt and how to purchase her newest book, click here.

 

Kent Knowles - Lucius and the Storm

Kent Knowles was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the son of an Air Force Chaplain. He grew up traveling around the world and first began making art while attending high school in Germany. In 1997, he earned a B.F.A. in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He continued to pursue art as a graduate student in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, where he earned his M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing in 2006. Kent currently lives in Atlanta with his wife Katherine and their fat black cat. Click here to visit his website.

Book Title: Lucius and the Storm

Release Date: March, 2007

Publisher: Red Cygnet Press

Address:

Red Cygnet Press
11858 Stoney Peak Dr. #525
San Diego, CA 92128

Email: info@redcygnet.com

Phone: (858) 674-1500

Fax: (858) 674-1511

 

Bill Donaldson - A Fortuitous Diversion

Had someone suggested a few years ago that I would coauthor the first book on women's college gymnastics, my response would probably have been something like, "Man! what have you been smoking?" I had been working as a scientific research manager for most of my 47-year career, overseeing the publication of hundreds of technical documents. For the last 29 years I had been directing research with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and had firmly set an early objective in retirement as documenting the first rational and practical approach to assessing and solving environmental problems.

Then I met Suzanne Yoculan, the ultra successful coach of the University of Georgia women's gymnastics team. The year was 1993. Suzanne's team had just won its third national championship, and she was being asked to write articles and book chapters about her success. Because she had no experience writing the sort of things she was asked to write, she sought my help. I had been a Georgia football fan since childhood, but I'd never written about the psychological aspects of college athletics. I found the idea intriguing. Suzanne invited my wife, Barbara, and me to travel to several out-of-town meets with the team. I attended all the home meets and watched practices whenever I could. Doing literature research for the articles we wrote about women's college gymnastics was captivating.

When Pat Summitt, the Tennessee women's basketball coach published a New York Times best seller about her program, I bought a copy, read it from cover to cover, and passed it along to Suzanne with a note saying, "You and I can write a better book than this about your program." Typical of Suzanne's impulsiveness her response was, "Well what are you waiting for?" So I outlined the chapters, along topical lines, and continued researching the sport of gymnastics, the evolution of women's sports at Georgia, and the accomplishments of Suzanne Yoculan. Of course I was also interviewing the coauthor of the proposed book. Then Suzanne decided she didn't want to write the book. I think she had reservations about it's success, and Suzanne doesn't like anything short of complete success. Whatever her reasons, I had discovered a compelling story, one that needed to be shared with lots of people with varied interests, so I decided to write the book over my by-line. My book on the environment had taken a back seat to the book I had no idea I'd write just a short while before.

That compelling story was that Suzanne Yoculan was not just the most successful female coach in the 25-year history of women's sports in the NCAA and the most successful coach in the 115-year history of University of Georgia intercollegiate sports. She had changed the world of women's college gymnastics and solved every problem that came her way - some far beyond the area of gymnastics. I compared her accomplishments to those of two of the University's ten National Academy of Sciences scholars, Eugene Odum and Glenn Burton. I knew both of these gentlemen, now deceased. Eugene is known world wide as the father of modern ecology, and Glenn Burton's hybrid Bermuda grasses are grown all over the world, not just on golf courses, football fields, and beautiful lawns.

As I began marketing a book about women's college gymnastics, I learned that publishers weren t interested in such a book, written by a retired research scientist. Eventually Judy Long and Tom Payton, at Hill Street Press, convinced Suzanne that the book would be terrific if written in first person by her, so she and I signed a contract with Hill Street in 2003.

The book, titled Perfect 10: The UGA GymDogs and the Rise of Women's College Gymnastics in America, addresses the many facets of Suzanne's accomplishments - well beyond her team's seven national championships and four undefeated seasons (no other team has even one). It also documents the emergence of women's sports at Georgia.

In the foreword Mary Lee Tracy, coach of the 1996 U.S. Gold Medal Olympic team, points out that women's college gymnastics has become the best gymnastics in the world. And in the introduction, I list the ten things that caused gymnastics to replace my life-long, traditional addiction to Georgia football. Among them is this excerpt from the book: "And you just know that these young ladies are not dumb jocks. They become fully integrated into the collegiate environment, socially and academically.& They are experts at time management. Having spent 35 to 40 hours a week on gymnastics prior to coming to college and less than 20 in college, they devote a significant part of their new-found extra time to academics. They all graduate, most in challenging curriculums - for example 10 percent of Georgia gymnastics alumnae are physicians or in medical school. In 2003, 15% were in the honors program." That ought to make alumni drool.

"Journey to Georgia," the book's second chapter, links two incredible stories - one about how a freshman on the 1972 Penn State women's gymnastics team quit the team because she found the mundane skills the team was doing were boring compared to what she had been doing in club gymnastics. She took a job as a part-time coach in State College to help pay her college expenses and discovered that coaching was her passion. That passion influenced her coaching. All over the area parents wanted their children to train with her.

Better and better gymnasts came to her until she was coaching elite gymnasts, the 150 or so U.S. women who compete all over the world, hoping to gain a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. This young coach became the hottest commodity in elite coaching, and then she gave it up to accept a job as coach of a college team that was potentially on the chopping bloc because of lack of interest in the sport at the University of Georgia. The second story, not told here, tells how that happened.

It didn't matter to the young coach that she would be paid only about a third of her salary in the elite coaching world. It didn't matter that the team she was going to coach might be discontinued. It didn't matter that there was only one outstanding gymnast on the team, that it had never won the Southeastern Conference championship or even qualified to compete in the national championship meet. It didn't matter that she had no office, no secretary, that her practice gym was a tiny, converted auditorium-basketball court shared with the men's gymnastics team, practicing at the same time. It didn't matter that her only assistant had never coached women and was in graduate school or that fewer than 200 people attended gymnastics meets at Georgia.

All she wanted was a chance to fulfill her vision that women's college gymnastics could be the most exciting and entertaining level of the sport - ncluding the Olympics - and she believed she could overcome any obstacle - no matter how formidable - to make that vision a reality. And she did - in spades!

When Bela Karolyi won the 1976 Olympic gold medal with his 15-year-old Romanian pixies (remember Nadia Comaneci?), doing highly athletic skills not seen before in women's gymnastics, coaches all over the world decided that female gymnasts over 18 could never perform such skills. But Suzanne wanted 18 to 23 -year-old college women to do Bela's physical gymnastics. So she had her conditioning instructors make her gymnasts stronger and better conditioned. And all of the other college teams had to follow, because the GymDogs were showing them new tricks and cleaning their clocks in competition.

Suzanne's demonstration that older gymnasts were not over the hill impacted the U.S. Olympic team also. In 1980 the average age of the U.S. Olympians was down to about 15 years. The average age of the 2004 U.S. Olympic team was about the same as the average of college gymnasts. And in 2004 the other countries' Olympic gymnasts were the same age as those from the U.S.

"Eat or Get Out of My Gym" is the most dramatic chapter in the book. It's about gymnast Kelly Macy's bout with life-threatening anorexia nervosa. Kelly's parents persuaded Suzanne that she, not they, had a better chance of saving Kelly. Reluctant and scared Suzanne attacked the problem just like she does everything else. She visited a clinic in Florida specializing in obsessive compulsive behavior, returned, and marshaled the extensive resources available at UGA: psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, fitness experts, her coaches, and her team. She harnessed the compulsiveness that caused the disorder and reversed it to get Kelly well.

Meanwhile Kelly's high school gym mate, Christi Henrich, who was auditioning for the U.S. Olympic team, also developed anorexia. Just after Kelly completed her senior year of college, Christi died of complications from anorexia nervosa. She didn't have the University of Georgia, the GymDogs, and Suzanne Yoculan to save her life.

Other chapters in the book address Suzanne's coaching philosophy, based on honesty, enthusiasm, and putting the physical and psychological welfare of her gymnasts above all else. One chapter explains how she raised attendance at meets from two hundred to ten thousand, and another recounts Suzanne's forcing her peers to support her fight to make scoring in college gymnastics uniform and fair.

But the chapter I am most appreciative of is titled "Gender Equity." It recognizes the legacy of Liz Murphey, the woman who was the first female athletics administrator at Georgia. When Liz retired in the late 1990s, she took the files from her office with her to Cleveland with the intention of writing a history of women's athletics at Georgia. Liz never got to write this history, but she dictated an abbreviated version to me in several taped telephone conversations. She was able to read all of her input to the book and approve it before her death in October, 2005.

As Liz told it, Joel Eaves, the former athletics director, who brought Vince Dooley to Georgia, was a bona fide, card-carrying, male chauvinist. Six years after enactment of Title IX, which, in simple terms, requires that tax supported institutions provide equal opportunities for men and women in intercollegiate athletics, The University of Georgia had not hired a single paid coach for a women's sport; and, although about 150 men were on athletic scholarships, not one woman was on scholarship.

Then when Joel Eaves retired in 1980 his protégé, whom he had mentored in athletic management, took his place. Discouraged, Liz expected a continuation of Joel Eaves' policies. And sure enough, the new athletics director called Liz into his office and said, "Liz I don't understand all this Title IX stuff - and I don't have time to learn. I've got to coach a football team." Liz's worst nightmare appe" the new athletics director, Vince Dooley, continued - "But I want to do what's right. You tell me what you need, and I'll help you get it."

Liz said that within three years Georgia went from the absolute bottom among NCAA colleges to near the top in compliance with Title IX. Within a few years Vince Dooley had helped Liz develop the top women's intercollegiate athletics program in the nation. And if Vince and Liz ever even thought about slowing down, there was the first female coach they hired , Suzanne Yoculan, stoking the fire to keep them advancing women's sports as well as other non-revenue-producing sports at Georgia.

Suzanne closes the chapter, titled "On the Plateau,&" this way: "In 1983 when I came to Georgia to my first college coaching job, I dreamed that someday mature gymnasts would do Olympic-level skills in the vibrant college atmosphere. In the 22 years since then hundreds of club gyms have sprung up like mushrooms all over the country, producing thousands of talented young gymnasts. NCAA scoring standards have become much more challenging over the years.

"But, even so, as these exceptional gymnasts have come into the college ranks, the winning scores at the national championship have risen about 10 points. My dreams have been fulfilled and surpassed. Women's collegiate gymnastics is the best gymnastics in the world today."

Suzanne wrote that just after the GymDogs had won the 2005 NCAA national championship. The GymDogs went on to go undefeated in 2006, winning their seventh NCAA championship. And with the entire lineup who won the 2006 championship returning, joining another former U.S. Olympian and five other outstanding freshmen, the college gymnastics coaches predicted, almost unanimously, that Suzanne's GymDogs will be champion in 2007 as well.

I can't imagine the Georgia gymnastics program and Suzanne Yoculan going much higher. So I think I'll get back to writing my environmental book.