Boy Gymnasts Find a Mentor : He Runs School for Males in Field Dominated by Girls

If you don’t mind being greeted by a loud chorus of groans, you might say that Rob Banis has had his ups and downs.

In 1984, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records with a 17-hour, 26-minute stint on a pogo stick. That took 125,102 jumps.

A year and a half ago, Banis was jumping again, this time on a trampoline with another gymnast, shooting a TV commercial for a tire company. He had a tire on one shoulder and came down hard, breaking his leg in three places. After two surgeries, he faces a possible third that may or may not restore his performing career.

But Banis, 28, is not so concerned about whether he can resume pogo sticking or flying high on a trampoline; he is too busy running the only gymnastics program exclusively for boys in Southern California and one of only a handful in the nation.

“The real backbone of any gymnastics program is the girls’ program,” said Peter Vidmar, gold medalist in the ’84 Games and now a resident of Woodbridge in Irvine. “I admire Rob in sticking to his commitment to an all-boys program . . . it’s pretty bold.”

Vidmar, who sometimes works out at Banis’ U.S. Gymnastics Training Center in Irvine near Lake Forest and this week is working as a television commentator from Seoul, said Banis’ success is due largely to his dedication. “He is extremely consistent, never moody, always enthusiastic,” Vidmar said. “With some coaches, they are hyper one day and really up to teach, but in the doldrums on another day.”

The gym has 6,000 square feet with 24-foot ceilings, wall-to-wall floor matting and equipment for the men’s six gymnastics events (floor exercise, stiff rings, pommel horse, vaulting horse, parallel bars and the horizontal bar). Six instructors, including Banis, teach 182 pupils, from age 3 1/2 to adult.

By contrast, the giant SCATS Gymnastics Academy program based in Huntington Beach has a flagship facility of 20,000 square feet and three other gyms, with total enrollment of more than 3,000.

“It’s a small business, of course,” Banis said of his own program. “I will never be a wealthy man running a gym and coaching boys’ gymnastics. But it’s important.”

What about the pogo stick? Does that figure into his programs? “Not since the accident,” Banis says, patting his right leg. “I have a steel rod in here from knee to ankle.”

Banis, whose first love was swimming, moved to Orange County from Topeka, Kan., when he was a high school junior to compete with the Nadadores swim team in Mission Viejo. But he wound up with “teen-age burnout” beacuse of a heavy training schedule. So, relatively late in life, he took up gymnastics, gaining a spot on the Cal State Fullerton team.

The pogo stick entered the picture when a manufacturer’s representative from Jetstar came to the Mission Viejo Gymnastics Center in 1983 and asked if any gymnasts wanted to learn the sport and promote it. Banis, who was coaching there at the time, took him up on it, with his training culminating in his record feat at Irvine Meadows Summerfest on June 23, 1984.

With a support team to cheer him on, Banis donned a kidney support belt and began jumping.

“The strategy--if you can say there is a strategy to pogo sticking--is to absorb the stress in the hips,” Banis said. “It’s usually the ankles and knees that go first.”

As the hours wore on, his girlfriend and family members fed him Gatorade, “grapes, bananas, you know, things that you can eat while bouncing.” Eventually, he settled into a rhythm that became almost trancelike. “Once you get past a certain point, you just keep going. I was pretty oblivious.”

Finally, having jumped from 5 a.m. to nearly 10:30 p.m., with five-minute breaks every hour, Banis took his last bounce and was carried away with cheers to a Jacuzzi at his home.

The record has since been eclipsed by at least one other jumper, (Guy Stewart of Ohio on March 8, 1985; 130,077 jumps), but Banis seems content with his initial effort. “I probably wouldn’t do it again,” he said. “The reason I did it was because I never made it to the Olympics in either sport (swimming and gymnastics), so I wanted to do something that nobody has ever done. It’s something I can show my grandchildren someday.”

The media attention also didn’t hurt his fledgling boys gymnastics program, he acknowledges. With the gap between girls and boys programs, he figured he needed all the help he could get.

“The ratio is about five to one, girls to boys,” said Jan Claire, director of the United States Gymnastics Federation, which represents 160,000 competitive gymnasts, coaches and judges.

“Girls learn much faster than boys at an earlier age,” Banis explains. “They are better coordinated and have a longer attention span. They are easier to work with up to 11 to 12 years old, then the girls start to blossom, so to speak; their bodies change. At that age, the boys are just starting to develop their strength and coordination. Traditionally, a girl’s gymnastics career has pretty much peaked at 14, 15 or 16 years old. I’m not saying they can’t do gymnastics after that, just that this tends to be the peak age.

“Boys are in it a lot longer. They can go to 23-24-25. The average age of a male Olympian gymnast is 22 to 25.”

Most male gymnasts are between 5-5 and 5-10, Banis said. At 5-9 1/2, 150 pounds, the brown-haired, green-eyed coach is on the tall end.

Banis says he can usually tell whether a gymnast has potential at age 5 or 6, “although we don’t like to classify them as recreational or competitive.” There are other factors--puberty being No. 1--that can alter the situation, he says.

Attitude is the other big factor. “It is 50% physical; the other 50% is mental--dedication, desire, the ability to concentrate. In fact, the toughest kids to coach are sometimes the best physically,” Banis says. “They have the God-given talent and do the things right the first time, but they don’t have the discipline. I sometimes see ones that are less gifted but have such great dedication and discipline that they make it to the top. . . they’re the ones who win the medals.”

Gymnastics experts from Vidmar to Cathy Rigby have emphasized the mental as well as physical.

“It carries over to everything; it is a very generic sport,” said Vidmar, who gives motivational lectures to corporations. “It even teaches you how to take risks. In fact, there is an element called risk in our (competition judging).”

Patti Hastings of Mission Viejo, whose son Greg, 13, was on the gym’s Class IV team, said it has had a noticeable effect. “He now has more strength, and the determination to do things and do them right. He completes things, and his grades are up.”

After only four years, U.S. Gymnastics is making a name for itself in competition. In Class IV (the lowest of five competition levels going up to Olympic training), the 7-to-9-year-olds and the 10-to-14-year-olds took team first places in the state championships in May held at Newhope Academy of Gymnastics in Fountain Valley. Banis’ gym boasts several upcoming stars, such as Steve Van Etten, 8, of Riverside, who took a first place in his category of the state championships and scored a 9.8 out of 10 points at the Silver State Classic, a Western Regional Invitational meet in Reno, and Travis Warford, 9, of Huntington Beach, who placed third in the state championships. In the 10-to-14-year-old age group, Joshua Hoblick, 10, of Irvine took first place.

The gym is also the workout home for Chris Hahn, 14, of San Juan Capistrano, a Class II gymnast who scored high in recent regional championships, and Brian Radtke, 13, of El Toro, who is on the U.S. Junior National Team and is ranked in the top 50 in the nation. Brian works out five days a week at U.S. Gymnastics and is coached by Robert Null of Mission Viejo Gymnastics on weekends.

Will the gym ever produce an Olympian?

“That’s what we are aiming for, of course,” Banis says with a grin. “But I want to emphasize that I think gymnastics is important for non-competitors because it helps them develop skills they can use the rest of their lives.”