Hello everyone, and Happy Gymnastics Saturday!
Continue reading with a subscription to The IX
Get unlimited access to our exclusive coverage of a varitety of women’s sports, including our premium newsletter by subscribing today!
Already a member?
Login
I’m delighted to be back as the gymnastics writer for The IX Sports. Huge snaps to my dear friend Lela Moore for her incredible work on this newsletter over the past few years. Lela is a beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox, and is kicking ass at her new library job. Congratulations, Lela!
Moving on to the news of the day: Al Fong — founder and head coach at Great American Gymnastics Express (GAGE Center) — is “Suspended from All Contact” effective immediately through Dec. 22, 2030, according to the U.S. Center for SafeSport. Fellow GAGE coach and Fong’s wife Armine Barutyan was also suspended for a year.
Fong’s suspension comes five years after the start of the SafeSport investigation and about three billion years since we all realized he was problematic.
The IX Daily: Six different women’s sports in your inbox every week!
Subscribe now and join us, just $6 a month or $60 a year. It’s the women’s sports media network we all wished for, and now it’s here! Soccer Monday, Tennis Tuesday, Basketball Wednesday, Golf Thursday, Hockey Friday – powered by The Ice Garden — and Gymnastics Saturday.
Fong had been under investigation for verbal, emotional and physical abuse since June 2020 at the latest, with 40 allegations dating back to the early 2000s, Scott Reid reported for the Orange County Register in 2023. In 2021 the investigation was put on hold so Fong could take athletes to the Tokyo Olympics, Reid reported.
According to USA Gymnastics, “Suspended from All Contact” means “the individual is not permitted any contact with any USA Gymnastics-sanctioned event, member club, professional member or athlete involved with USA Gymnastics member clubs or events.”
GAGE responds
The people at GAGE said they are “deeply disappointed” with the decision and “respectfully disagree with the findings” in a statement, adding that they intend to appeal the decision. The statement notes that the allegations “date back more than three decades,” which isn’t the defense they think it is, sorry.
It’s unclear what this means for GAGE and the athletes who train there. Fong and Barutyan will remain suspended during the appeals process, which works like a “mini-trial” and will include witness testimony from alleged victims, according to Caroline Price over at Forbes. GAGE has three gymnasts on the women’s national team, all juniors: Lavi Crain, Kaylee Sath and Aulya Daniels. Barutyan coached the junior worlds team, which included Crain, just two months ago.
A bit of background
Fong has been a near-constant presence in the elite world for decades. He’s coached some of the best gymnasts in the country to Olympic and worlds teams since he founded GAGE in Blue Springs, Missouri, in 1979.
But if you knew about Fong’s past, seeing him on TV may have given you that “icky” feeling. As someone noted on Reddit, Fong has the rare distinction of having an “Athlete Deaths” section on Wikipedia. Julissa Gomez broke her neck doing an unsafe Yurchenko-style vault in 1988. Christy Henrich died of anorexia in 1994. In both instances, Fong is alleged to have applied so much pressure on Gomez and Henrich that it contributed to their deaths.
He lay low for a few years before Terin Humphrey started to rise through the elite ranks in the early aughts and made the Olympic team in 2004. In the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, an ESPN article portrayed him as a changed man. The “old” Al Fong would “insult and scream,” and wouldn’t tolerate laughter, it read, adding that his previous “overbearing ways almost cost him everything.”
Still, “Sometimes traces of the old coach poke through. And it’s hard to watch.” Remember that this journalist was allowed access to the gym, so Fong was supposedly on his best behavior when he reportedly told an 11-year-old “you’re not a kid anymore” and made her cry. A new man, indeed.
I’ll leave you with former GAGE athlete Amelia Disidore’s reaction on TikTok:
Other gym news
NCAA season kicks off this week! Utah faced Minnesota and Iowa last night. Tonight, it’s UCLA, Cal and Oregon State @ Washington. Tomorrow features Iowa State @ Missouri.
Becky Downie wrote that she’s been “struggling immensely to even access adequate training facilities” in a now-deleted Instagram post.
Emma Malabuyo had surgery on her foot:
Ellie Black was named to the Order of Canada.
Banned coach Sean Gardner wasn’t sanctioned until 2022 despite “red flags” being raised in 2017. Gardner worked at Chow’s from 2018 to 2022.
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast & Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis.
Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts and make sure to subscribe!
Five at the IX: UCLA Gymnastics
UCLA head coach Janelle McDonald spoke to the media ahead of the team’s first meet of the season against Washington, Cal and Oregon State. Edited for clarity and length.
How is the health of the team going into this first meet?
We’re doing good. We had a good holiday break and now we’re ready to jump back in. We’ve had two days of training under our belt. The team’s looking good. They’re super excited and ready to kick off the season this weekend.
What does it mean for you guys to have all four Pac-12 teams in one meet?
It’s super nice to be able to have these moments where we can get back together. Also just to compete on this side of the country with other west coast teams is really exciting. There’s a lot of history between all of these programs, and so it’s fun to get to kick off the season together. To do so in Washington will be super fun.
Last year’s season opener was kind of a learning curve moment for this squad. What did you take away from that experience?
It doesn’t really shape how we approach this meet. Two seniors falling on our first event last year wasn’t something that we had anticipated. It was just sort of a fluke.
The team’s been preparing really well, which is what our goal is right now — to go out there confident and kick off the season. It’s pretty early to have a first meet. Typically, it’s a little bit later. But they’re ready and excited to build on the start that we had at Meet the Bruins. Just to get out there again and do it with a lot of new freshmen will be a lot of fun.
What do you see in terms of leadership from your team?
It’s been really fun this year because we do have a younger team watching a lot of our returners step into different leadership roles. I think Katelyn Rosen is one. She just really brings the competitive fire and energy every day, and is someone who’s shown our freshmen what it takes to be really successful at this level, and how to train with intentionality and efficiency. I’ve been really proud of her stepping into different leadership roles.
Ciena Alipio, one of our seniors, is taking the tone of the team constantly and making sure she’s showing up for the younger athletes. She’s a great shoulder, a good listening ear, and she’s really a warm hug to start your day with. Those two combined have taken on great leadership roles on the team this year, which has been really fun to see.
What makes you excited about this year’s team?
This team is really fun. It’s very different from last year because they’re so much younger. But there’s this energy and this desire to be great from this group. I think that they’re willing to put in the work and lean on each other. To be, right out of the gate, already doing that, I think it bodes really well for us.
This team, they’re competitive. They have a lot of experience under their belts, whether it be on the international elite stage or on the NCAA stage. They really want to lean on that and continue to build on the success we had last year, and I can feel that in everything they do. I can hear it in their conversations with each other, and I can see it by the work they’re producing in the gym.
It’s an exciting team. They’re super fun, they’re super connected already, and we’re ready to hit the ground running this weekend.
| Mondays: Soccer |
| By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer |
| Tuesdays: Tennis |
| By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer |
| Wednesdays: Basketball |
| By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports |
| Thursdays: Golf |
| By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports |
| Fridays: Hockey |
| By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden |
| Saturdays: Gymnastics |
| By: Lela Moore, @runlelarun, Freelance Writer |
