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Norm Loader - Recipient of the 2011 Stan Stenoff
Coaching Achievement Award
When given the opportunity to help
present this award to Norm, I must admit that immediately after
accepting the offer I felt the weight of a huge responsibility; that is,
trying to communicate all that Norm has done in his 30-plus years of
coaching on behalf of the countless number of athletes he’s worked with.
I guess I can start by saying that
Norm stands out for his ability to look beyond the athlete in the gym
and coach them as a person. No matter how trivial or serious, an issue
an athlete is experiencing, there is nobody I’ve met who is more willing
to take the extra time out of their day or after practice to lend help
when needed. Whether is be working on getting past that one problem
area, (in my case, a 6am biweekly pommel horse boot camp) or to stay
late and chat about life, Norm would never shy away from going the extra
mile to not only make sure that his athletes would reach their potential
in the gym, but also stay on the right track in life.
Norm has never been one to discard any
athlete either. The attitude, which makes people say, “he’s too tall,
she’s too old, this guy’s not flexible enough”, never really crosses
Norm’s mind. And the reason for this is simply because he doesn’t
measure success in medals and championships. Maybe it’s because Norm
didn’t start gymnastics himself until he was a teenager, and never had
the benefit of a “proper coach” as we have come to understand it today,
but Norm truly thrives at teaching people to love the sport as much as
he succeeds at teaching the sport itself. If you want a great example
of this attitude, you can take a look at Norm’s oldest competitive
athlete, and no, I’m not talking about myself. His name is Klaus. He
walked into our gym club a couple of years back and said he needed a
place to train because he was competing in a master’s competition in the
65 and over age category in Germany. Most people, and myself included
would think that you’d have to be nuts to let this walking anomaly of
physical brilliance swing back hip circles 8 feet above the ground, and
learn a front tuck for the first time at the age of 67, but Norm didn’t
hesitate to not only take him on, but he invited him to train alongside
his 6 national level athletes! It didn’t matter to Norm that same of
the athletes had larger meets coming up, and a more promising future
ahead of them in the sport. If you came to the gym, and you wanted to
do gymnastics badly enough, Norm would be there to guide you regardless
of any other circumstances.
And how might this unorthodox decision
benefit these athletes? Well Klaus cheered us on at provincial
championships that year and gave the feedback and the pep talks and the
emotional responses to our routines. A 67-year-old cheerleader if you
will.
The truth is, when you do gymnastics
under Norm, you know that you are doing it for yourself, there’s nobody
trying to take credit, and as appreciative as you are of all the lessons
and skills that Norm has taught you, Norm has taken the role of a tool,
or an incredibly valuable resource if you will, that one uses on their
path to success and personal fulfillment. It is for this reason that
the group of athletes that Norm has, functions so well together as a
unit. They all buy into the love for the sport that Norm has taught
them, an it spreads and grows amongst his athletes until they become
more like brothers than they are training partners. When you’ve been
one of Norm’s athletes for years and you’re in this ‘brotherhood’,
Norm’s work is all but done. At competitions, it’s the boys looking out
for each other, it’s the boys cheering wildly and fist pumping from the
coral, and it’s the boys who are picking each other up when things fall
apart and the boys who are embracing each other in moments of victory.
There’s little for Norm to do, is the truth. A pat on the back, a
congratulatory handshake, and some gentle words of reflection are all
that’s needed at this point. And this is Norm’s design. He’s the
engineer of this small community that operates like a beautiful
machine. And of course there are times when repairs are needed or one
squeaky wheel needs the oil, but it works, and it grows. And it all
comes back to the attitude the passion and the uncompromised drive that
Norm puts into seeing each individual push themselves to be their best,
and to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished at the end of each day,
and at the end of their careers.
One could argue that the measure of a
great coach comes from the respect and appreciation that they receive in
return from their athletes. To demonstrate this, I look to January 9th,
2010. This was the date of the first annual ‘Hug Norm Loader Day’,
which was created on Face book by one of his National Open Athletes. So
everybody be sure to mark your calendars and please give Norm Loader a
big round of applause as he comes up to accept this award that he so
truly deserves.
By Lukas Gataveckas/TGI athlete
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