Houston has widely been considered the ‘capital’ of women’s gymnastics in America since the renowned Karolyi coaching duo arrived in the early 1980s, bought their infamous training ranch, and began creating the first American gymnastics champions, revolutionizing the American women’s gymnastics program in the process. Although Houston does produce regular champions in the sport, the idea of Houston being the only or primary producer of champions is far from the truth. Through my research, I show that gymnastics programs across America have become more spatially diverse since the creation of the American national team and that Houston is not the only place talent is found in the sport.
Hello all, and welcome to my project! This semester was pretty rough, but I was able to bring myself up from the lows of COVID by watching a LOT of women’s gymnastics – I’m a huge fan! In many of the videos and documentaries I’ve watched on the sport, it often comes up that Houston, and generally Texas, is considered the ‘hub’ or ‘capital’ of women’s gymnastics in America. However, talent in the sport doesn’t come from just this one place, and the sport’s champions aren’t made solely here either. I wanted to see what the true capital of the sport was and is, so I took on this project. After completing my analysis, I was surprised to see that the Northeast was really the main talent hub in the sport! However, Houston has certainly provided plenty of talent in recent years, but it certainly isn’t alone in creating champions.
This is a super interesting project Patrick! I too have always thought of Houston as the ‘capital’ of American women’s gymnastics. My mother and aunt trained with the Karolyi’s in the late 80s – early 90s, so the idea of Houston being the mecca of all things women’s gymnastics is deeply rooted in our family. I thought that Figure 2 was particularly interesting, as you can see how that idea was to true to an extent soon after the Karolyi’s established their gym (median was in TX), but the slow migration of the median away from the Houston area is very indicative of the rise of other cities as hotpots for producing elite gymnasts. Nice work!
Jackson that is so cool! I would love to hear stories from your mom and aunt’s experience at the Karolyi ranch sometime. And yes, Figure 2 in particular is especially interesting – it reflects the slow rise in gymnasts coming from the Midwest while the gyms from the Northeast continue to produce talent and the Texan gyms inconsistently produce talent.
Figure 2 presents a really exception way to display data with both temporal and spatial dimensions. It makes me think of a regression distance from Houston as the dependent variable and year and independent variable to see the degree to which there is a trend, but the display of information is so effective that this seems wholly unnecessary. Interesting work.
On second thought, because gymnasts may compete for multiple olympics, there would presumably be an interesting level of temporal autocorrelation that could be explored. Just a thought.
Thank you very much! I found this figure to be the most interesting as well, because it does exactly what you described – show to what extent the talent is coming from outside Houston (and Texas in general).
I’m from Houston so this was super interesting to learn about! I’m curious about Figure 2, the agglomerated annual median center for women on the senior and junior olympic team. How was the center calculated and do you think the kernel density map or the agglomerated annual median map is a more effective tool for understanding the data?
The data for figure two was calculated using the Median Center tool, with the case as the Year (where year is the competition year for the national team). I think both are definitely valuable in their own respects; where the density maps visibly display the change in the amount of talent produced by each hub relative to other cities in that quad, the median center analysis gives an interesting perspective on a sort of movement away or towards Houston.
Hey Fallon,
This project turned out wonderful! Your animations really help demonstrate the temporal data of the shifting center of gravity. The slow migration towards Ohio pulled by the Northeast, and then away towards Kansas City spurred by growth in Californian dominance is fascinating. I’m just trying to find justification for why certain cities seem to punch so far above their weight. At first, I thought that perhaps gymnastics is a good year-round indoor sport, prompting its popularity in the colder north. However, as you’ve discussed, Houston is so dominant but also hot, and SoCal’s growth also seems to dispute that theory. What drives an area’s dominance, do you think?
Also, I know that this map examines the origin of women on the national team, but how do you think the map would shift if you examined gymnasts who medalled. Gabby Douglas and Shawn Johnson pop into my head as the ones I’ve heard most about in recent years (although I do not follow the sport), and they are from Virginia and Iowa, respectively. Also, what is the greater impact of this project, do you think? Is it a step allowing recruiters to better allot their time or potentially for those promoting the sport to find areas to target to culminate greater talent, for example? Again, a wonderful project and super well presented. Great job!
Thank you so much Castle!
For the density maps of each Olympic quad, I think the relative densities among cities is mostly random, since talent really can come from anywhere at anytime. However, the rise in talent coming from the Midwest over the past few decades I think likely comes from the growth of popular gyms in the area. There are gyms in each of these cities which often produce Olympic-caliber gymnasts, which is one of the reasons Houston is so great to begin with – Carly Patterson, Rebecca Bross, and Nastia Liukin, all world all-around medalists, came from the same gym in Houston. With big gyms existing in each of these hubs, it really is just a matter of whether or not the talent for that year from these gyms is national team quality.
I really am not sure what the results would be by just looking at the medals, but that would definitely be interesting to look into.
Hi Patrick! Nice job! This is such an interesting topic, and I am glad you were able to show the migration of female gymnastes. Do you have any thoughts on why different new hot spots occurred over the years? I would like to know what you think about it!
Hi Patrick! This is a very interesting project! I love the way you are doing animation to present the data, especially in presenting the time series data to show how gymnastics talents source changed during the time. I think it would be better to illustrate the intellectual merit of this project, such as helping the coach and recruiters to predict the probability of the potential ability and gift of gymnastics based on their spatial location/hometown.
Hi Patrick, great and very interesting project! I am curious if you considered the reasons Houston is no longer the capital for gymnastics?
Very effective visualizations–good job. I especially like Figure 2, as it shows the trend over time in a single frame, and shows a clear trend toward the midwest over time. But in dialog with the other figures, the overall pattern is one of dispersion and diversification. I wonder what you think is driving these processes of dispersion and diversification? Did the Karolyis fail to delegate and deputize their operations, such that they were tied exclusively to them? What other major competing centers emerged? Or is there a more “rhyzomatic” explanation, such that the institutional supports for gymnastics (general training systematics at the national level) improved more generally, creating much more dispersed opportunities? Likely a mix of these. I was not familiar with the idea that Houston is the capital of gymnastics in the U.S.