WAG Drama at US Classic

[tomtnt]

Not much actual gymnastics drama with Simone competing - but at least we have Simone dropping this little gem:

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

Whoa. I saw her original tweets, but I had no idea they were about Morgan. Which I hate because I love both of those athletes. As gymnasts, but also from what I have heard about them as people.

 

[rjb123]

What?? What is going on? I did notice that Riley M looked less than pleased when Simone's beam score came up, even my DD commented on this. Now I have to good look at twitter...

 

[tomtnt]

simone is on partial blast mode - would love to hear the whole story instead of the little pieces she keeps on tweeting:

 

[vagymmomma]

This makes me so sad.

 

[amiandjim]

Supposedly, Morgan posted on her private IG “*****, it’s not all about you, we are here too.” And Jade Carey showed Simone. If true, that’s a pretty terrible thing to say, and I could see why Simone would be upset. However, they both need to focus on gymnastics and get off social media.

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

I totally agree. I am so glad social media was in its infancy when I was that age. Better decisions should have been made, but I try to remind myself how young they are.

 

[3rd_time_around]

I totally agree. I am so glad social media was in its infancy when I was that age. Better decisions should have been made, but I try to remind myself how young they are.

They are young, but should know better. I understand Morgan's frustration with all the focus and attention being on Simone. Morgan did win the World AA title after all. But, I also hope that Simone, being older and wiser, will just drop it. It doesn't look good for either of them to continue this way. I love both of these awesome athletes, so I hope this stops. Morgan should have known that her tweet would not go unnoticed and would cause some drama.

 

[Flippin'A]

It's so much better to hear the actual story that all the crazy speculation that's going around. This strikes me as a bad mistake from a teenager who forgets that even "private" posts can still become public, and an overreaction from Simone who may have already been feeling insecure returning to competition without her friends from the last quad. If she was already feeling like an outsider, then this would have just confirmed her fears. I hope this is a good lesson for Morgan and that she works on her sportsmanship. But really, I wish Simone would have just talked to Morgan in private (or even just given her the silent treatment or whatever.) Her tweets made it sound like Morgan attacked her in some way when she was really just venting frustrations that she didn't think would ever get back to Simone. They were both wrong, but Simone really needs to be the bigger person here and take it off social media.

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

It's immature all around for sure. But most kids/young adults that age are immature. This kind of drama runs rampant among my sister's cohort and she's about that age. Theirs just doesn't interest a huge audience. I do hope Simone will put the phone down. I don't think posting it or reading it is helping her at all.

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

On the swimming thing that's on right now, they just interviewed an athlete who'd deleted all his social media, at least coming up to this meet. Honestly, I think that is by far the things any of these people can do.

 

[JessSyd]

It's immature all around for sure. But most kids/young adults that age are immature.

Feelings run deep when you are that age. We, on the other hand, don't have the excuse of extreme youth, so for us to salivate and speculate over the 'drama' and gossip would probably be worse behaviour. Best to ignore it.

I will say that I imagine it is difficult for Simone, bursting on to a scene that has moved on since she was last in it and having to find herself a new niche there. And watching the post-competition interview with Morgan yesterday it was impossible not to feel sorry for her having to answer question after question after question about Simone. I thought one question was OK but four (almost half the interview) was bordering on insensitive. And I thought she answered them very well.

 

[LemonLime]

I genuinely have no opinion on the substance of the tweets or of the opinions on this thread. A lot more went on under the public iceberg.

What bothers me is that many people assume that the proper behavior of these two young women was to say nothing and take the high road. Taking the high road is a commendable choice, but it is an EQUALLY commendable choice to speak up. I hope we have emerged from the past gymnastics culture of silence where speaking up and having an opinion is rendered immature or being a troublemaker. It smacks of putting Baby in the corner, and no one puts Baby in the corner (anymore). At a minimum, one athlete believes she was bullied and another feels she should be respected for her accomplishments. Not only are these appropriate feelings to have, but they are also feelings they should be able to share (or choose not to share).

To me, it's a very exciting time in gymnastics that we have four young American women (Simone, Morgan, Ragan and Riley) who could win the world championship on the right day. Such depth creates competition. Competition is healthy. Conflict is also healthy because it allows people to work through their emotional issues instead of stifling them. Female gymnasts have long been put on a pedestal of pixie-ness, but male athletes are given more room to engage with their sport, with each other and with the public. I would like female gymnasts to be given the same wide range of understanding and appreciation. Someone recently asked me if Tom Brady threw shade at a fellow athlete, would we have the same reaction? Would we think Tom was being feisty and competitive, while the same words from a 17-year-old Nadia Comaneci would feel tasteless?

Frankly, the more our athletes are honest, multi-dimensional and diverse, the more the sport overall will benefit and the more sponsors will want to engage with USAG. Even in Level 3 practice, if a gymnast has a bad day, it's wrong to expect her to go bounding out of the gym with a smile on her face. Learning how to crawl out of a valley and appreciate sadness from joy are healthy human emotions. For every Nancy, there is a Tonya. For every Tara, there is a Sarah. These varieties propel sport forward. We should not be afraid of opinions and conflict, EVEN when we personally disagree with the content expressed.

 

[Seeker]

I agree. I don’t want to silence them. We’ve been down that disastrous path and I don't want to ever be there again. I’m a grown woman and my feelings would have been hurt by a statement referencing me in that way, so we shouldn’t expect Simone to be a robot and act like it’s fine. It’s not fine. I certainly wouldn’t have handled it that way, but we also don’t know the whole story so I’ll withhold my judgment and hope they can all work it out. These girls have been through an emotional roller coaster, so I think we need to give them a bit of a break.

 

[suebee]

I know nothing about the situation other than what has been written in this thread. And while I agree that everyone is allowed to have feelings, and express their feelings, I think my distaste is for Simone taking this conflict public, to her 1 million twitter followers, instead of, I presume, trying to handle it directly with Morgan.

And I feel that if she chose to take it public instead of addressing the conflict with Morgan directly, then she should have been direct about what the conflict was, and expressed her feelings more clearly, rather than tweeting vague, cryptic messages (at least, they seem vague and cryptic to me, but maybe I am missing something because I am old and not knowledgeable about social media). Bringing this conflict to the attention of 1 million plus people in such a cryptic way seems to increasing the “drama.”

Perhaps unfair, but I guess I had higher expectations if Simone, who is older, more experienced, and clearly just such a dominant gymnast.

Morgan apparently posted something on her private Instagram which I presume was just for close friends, and not everyone in the world, right? But again, I am old and don’t get social media, so I may not understand it correctly. And Simone found out, her feelings were hurt and she felt disrespected, so she tweeted something publicly, though vague, about Morgan, who is 4 years younger than her.

I guess I would have expected more from Simone.

 

[triplethreat+1]

I genuinely have no opinion on the substance of the tweets or of the opinions on this thread. A lot more went on under the public iceberg.

What bothers me is that many people assume that the proper behavior of these two young women was to say nothing and take the high road. Taking the high road is a commendable choice, but it is an EQUALLY commendable choice to speak up. I hope we have emerged from the past gymnastics culture of silence where speaking up and having an opinion is rendered immature or being a troublemaker. It smacks of putting Baby in the corner, and no one puts Baby in the corner (anymore). At a minimum, one athlete believes she was bullied and another feels she should be respected for her accomplishments. Not only are these appropriate feelings to have, but they are also feelings they should be able to share (or choose not to share).

To me, it's a very exciting time in gymnastics that we have four young American women (Simone, Morgan, Ragan and Riley) who could win the world championship on the right day. Such depth creates competition. Competition is healthy. Conflict is also healthy because it allows people to work through their emotional issues instead of stifling them. Female gymnasts have long been put on a pedestal of pixie-ness, but male athletes are given more room to engage with their sport, with each other and with the public. I would like female gymnasts to be given the same wide range of understanding and appreciation. Someone recently asked me if Tom Brady threw shade at a fellow athlete, would we have the same reaction? Would we think Tom was being feisty and competitive, while the same words from a 17-year-old Nadia Comaneci would feel tasteless?

Frankly, the more our athletes are honest, multi-dimensional and diverse, the more the sport overall will benefit and the more sponsors will want to engage with USAG. Even in Level 3 practice, if a gymnast has a bad day, it's wrong to expect her to go bounding out of the gym with a smile on her face. Learning how to crawl out of a valley and appreciate sadness from joy are healthy human emotions. For every Nancy, there is a Tonya. For every Tara, there is a Sarah. These varieties propel sport forward. We should not be afraid of opinions and conflict, EVEN when we personally disagree with the content expressed.

I agree with the last paragraph 100%, but the rest, only partially.
Of course I don't know the full story, but I can see where Morgan and the other girls are feeling upstaged by Simone. Valid? Yes. Can/should she be able to say something about it? Yes... Should she have lashed out at Simone on social media? No. Any teenager should be aware that nothing is private once posted (and while I realize any teenager, including my own, is likely to make mistakes, that's what they are- mistakes). Lash out at the media for focusing on Simone so much, by all means go ahead. Even better to speak up during an interview- isn't that what we really want for our girls? To be able to identify who is really hurting them and speak against it? Not to attack each other in redirected anger?
As for Simone, of course it's valid if she was hurt. I don't think anyone would say she shouldn't speak up. But posting cryptic messages on public media is not speaking up, nor is it helpful.
I also disagree about the male athletes- Tom Brady can throw shade on his competetors but not his teammates- and we all know gymnastics is like few other sports in it's blend of team and individual. The best comparison would be to MAG- and by all reports they are quite supportive of each other.

 

[Seeker]

I know nothing about the situation other than what has been written in this thread. And while I agree that everyone is allowed to have feelings, and express their feelings, I think my distaste is for Simone taking this conflict public, to her 1 million twitter followers, instead of, I presume, trying to handle it directly with Morgan.

And I feel that if she chose to take it public instead of addressing the conflict with Morgan directly, then she should have been direct about what the conflict was, and expressed her feelings more clearly, rather than tweeting vague, cryptic messages (at least, they seem vague and cryptic to me, but maybe I am missing something because I am old and not knowledgeable about social media). Bringing this conflict to the attention of 1 million plus people in such a cryptic way seems to increasing the “drama.”

Perhaps unfair, but I guess I had higher expectations if Simone, who is older, more experienced, and clearly just such a dominant gymnast.

Morgan apparently posted something on her private Instagram which I presume was just for close friends, and not everyone in the world, right? But again, I am old and don’t get social media, so I may not understand it correctly. And Simone found out, her feelings were hurt and she felt disrespected, so she tweeted something publicly, though vague, about Morgan, who is 4 years younger than her.

I guess I would have expected more from Simone.

We don’t know if she tried to address it in person/directly or not. Maybe she did and it didn’t go well? Hopefully all will learn a lesson from this and they’ll be able to move forward as a team.

 

[LemonLime]

@triplethreat+1 Your point about national team members being on the same team is interesting, perhaps correct, and - unfortunately - cannot be resolved. As all of us know, gymnastics is an unusual sport where you train as a group, but compete mostly individually. Following your argument, if every national team member in every sport could not speak up against a fellow national team member who did something inappropriate to them or to another national team member (I'm making a presumption and not a commentary on the specific situation), the silence would be deafening. I do not believe assuming the cloak of national team status means you cannot speak up when you personally believe you have been wronged by a teammate, although it surely should be considered. In my opinion, the Tom Brady analogy was accurate (although NCAA teams are clearly more similar to football teams than national teams - I hear you).

Although it got out of hand, perhaps the entire situation began because one athlete wanted another athlete to be more like a teammate and as an attempt to root out negativity? We simply do not know. They are 17 and 21, have great families, coaches, teammates and friends, are world champions and I personally trust they are both doing the right thing.

Again, though, they can say whatever they want without my commentary or judgment. I simply want to support their right to speak.

And no the men do not all get along because they are humans! It's a micro-size of WAG, with older athletes, a very different NCAA system, a complex selection paradigm, and lots of interrelationships. It's a positive and successful environment, but perhaps more different than similar to WAG.

 

[suebee]

We don’t know if she tried to address it in person/directly or not. Maybe she did and it didn’t go well? Hopefully all will learn a lesson from this and they’ll be able to move forward as a team.

Fair enough. Perhaps she did and it didn’t go well. Even if that was the case, I personally don’t feel that justifies Simone publicly tweeting about this conflict in this cryptic way. I don’t claim to know anything about elite gymnastics, but I guess as an outsider, I feel like I have higher expectations from someone who is 21 compared to someone who is 17, and someone who has been in the public eye for years as the GOAT gymnast.

I imagine that these younger girls all really admired Simone and looked up to her as a role model just a few years ago. With the USAG situation as it has been, have there been no national team training camps, so has Simone not gotten to know any of these younger current seniors? Or have there been and maybe they all didn’t get off on the right foot?

I do hope they all resolve it.

 

[Hollowarchkick]

There have certainly been fewer training camps together.