The dominant force that is the U.S. gymnastics program has led many countries to model their programs in a similar fashion. Dave Brubaker became Canada’s National Team director in May of 2014, and has been working hard to carry on the transition to a more unified, U.S.-modeled system within the Canadian gymnastics program.



The compulsory program in Canada has been undergoing big changes since before Brubaker became the National Team Director. “I was the head of the Women’s Technical Committee in the province of Ontario. Ontario has sort of been one of the leader of gymnastics in the country and a lot of times it was frustrating—clubs from Ontario would go to the United States and we’d go there to compete but they’d never come here because we had different rules.”

In light of this, it became paramount for Canada to develop unified rules, so they began moving in that direction. “Going back to the base 10 system made the meets run faster, so a meet that would typically take four and a half hours was now being done in two and a half hours. That became a lot more enjoyable for the athlete, the coach, and the parents.”

Brubaker noted that it’s much easier for the developing gymnasts to understand a score out of 10. “If the child takes a step on each landing on floor, they can sort of understand how the final score is composed, where with the artistry deductions and a lot of the new code, realities that we didn’t really understand were being applied, and it was quite confusing.” The Women’s Ontario Competitive Program was restructured beginning Sept 1, 2013 to use the rules of the USA JO program. After Ontario took that direction, Brubaker said many other provinces looked at it and followed suit. 

“When I looked at the JO in other countries—and I know there are several other countries in Central and South America now doing JO—one thing we thought might be possible in the future is to have an age group Pan Am Championship. So that was something we thought would maybe be an outcome five or six years from now. So we would have to discuss that with some of the other countries.” 

For development of the National team, Brubaker studied how the JO program affects the elite program in the United States, and “indeed we found that a lot of the athletes on [the U.S.] National Team currently have been a product of the JO program.” 

The U.S. system is successfully producing athletes that have huge potential to be world-class athletes, and as the dominance continues, more and more countries will look toward the United States as a model system for gymnastics development.

Watch our latest Beyond The Routine featuring the Canadian National Team on their road to Rio:
EPISODE ONE
EPISODE TWO
TRAILER


Related:
Canadian National Team Training Camp videos