By R.L. Bynum
A former Carolina gymnast was forced to sign a contract promising to lose weight by a former head coach and former assistant coach that threatened her scholarship, according to an extensive story published Monday in The Washington Post about the “toxic” culture of college gymnastics.
The allegations by Raine Gordon aren’t the sole focus of the story, which details problems several other gymnasts encountered at other colleges and issues at other programs.
Gordon alleges in the story that Amy Smith — a former UNC assistant head coach who is now Clemson’s head coach — “pitted gymnasts against one another and made them feel ashamed of her body.”
The story reports that when Gordon bruised her leg in a fall in 2017, Smith told her, according to the Post, that, “It looks bad because your leg is fat.”
According to what Gordon told the Post, Smith and retired longtime former UNC head coach Derek Galvin forced her to sign a contract that threatened her scholarship if she didn’t lose weight every week. Gordon said that bulimia “became like a team activity.”
Galvin told the Post that he was “ashamed of himself” for asking Gordon to sign the paper, which he didn’t consider to be a contract. He retracted it shortly afterward on the advice from the administration.
“I wish I had managed Raine’s student-athlete experience differently than I did,” Galvin told the Post. “If I could go back now to five minutes before she’s going to walk into my office, knowing what I know now, I would never have put that piece of paper on the desk.”
Gordon didn’t complete during her freshman season at Carolina in 2016–17, when she was suspended for drinking, according to the story. She transferred to Sacramento State after competing in every match during her sophomore season, earning personal bests of 9.825 on the bars against New Hampshire and 9.825 on the beam against Oklahoma (below video).
Galvin retired after 39 years as UNC head coach in June 2020. Carolina named Danna Durante the head coach in June 2021.
Smith was an assistant head coach at UNC from 2014 to 2017 after being an assistant coach in 2012–13. In April 2022, Smith became the first head gymnastics coach at Clemson, which is in its first season as a program.
The Post story, which you can read here, says that UNC declined to comment.
Photo from YouTube video screenshot
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