Young coach leads Lakeside gymnastics
Susan Martin may be only 23 years old, but she knows a little something about the history of the Lakeside High School gymnastics program.
Martin is in only her second season as the Eagles’ coach, but a conversation with her reveals many of the reasons that they’ve been able to compete successfully with Greater Spokane League teams, two or three classes higher and hundreds of students larger than Lakeside.
“There was a gym here for many years,” she said recently, “and that gym was the only reason that the high school was eventually able to start a gymnastics program. The community participated in supporting it, and my best friend’s mom ran it.
“I don’t even remember its real name – everybody just called it the Nine Mile gym. What it meant to the community is that our girls didn’t have to go to other clubs to do gymnastics, and that started everything. It’s rare to have a gymnastics team in a small school, but that’s the reason we’re here.”
The gym to which Martin refers started out as a firehouse, but when the community got a new station, the building became available. It currently serves as a ranger station.
Martin is a Lakeside graduate, and she was a student when the Greater Spokane League extended an invitation to the Eagles several years ago. And as generous as that was, it was certainly no act of charity, because Lakeside has competed well against the bigger schools since it joined the GSL.
“When we were first in the GSL,” Martin said, “it was more of a David and Goliath thing, but we’re way past that now. We’ve been successful enough that we’re just another team in the league now.”
Martin credits the Spokane gymnastics community for helping her feel welcome as the youngest coach in the league.
“Laurie Chadwick, who was my high school coach, has really helped me out,” she said, “and (University coach) Tracy Duncan has really reached out to help us when we needed it. There are coaches clinics where they show us how they run things and how their programs look.
“The gymnastics community in Spokane isn’t every team for itself – there are people with a lot of experience who are there to help if you need it. It could be intimidating, being so young, but it’s not, because of all that support.”
Thomas credits much of Lakeside’s postseason success to the seasoning the Eagles get during the GSL season. After the conclusion of their league meets, they compete against schools in their own classification having had the advantage of facing girls from larger, more-established programs.
Martin, who graduated from Lakeside in 2002, had just returned to Spokane during the summer of 2006 when a current Eagle gymnast encouraged her to apply for the vacant coaching position. Her age isn’t an issue, she says, because she’d been away from the community and the program and didn’t know any of the girls on her first team last year.
Lakeside’s numbers are down a little this year, but Martin is impressed by some quality freshmen, a couple strong seniors and a German foreign-exchange student, and she feels the Eagles will be as competitive as ever.
Besides coaching and being the mother of a 2-year-old, Martin works two other part-time jobs, so staying busy is not an issue, and she loves what she does.
“When you get out of high school,” she said, “you say that you’re never going back. But now that I’m coaching, I see it as a real privilege to return. I was part of the program, and now I get to coach it.”