The garbage can didn’t have a chance. Alicia Sacramone Quinn, captain of the 2008 U.S. Olympic silver-medalist gymnastics team and winner of 10 World Championship medals, had just been told she hadn’t made a long-since-forgotten gymnastics team, so she reared back, channeled her fury into her foot and unleashed it on the bin.
Now a mother of four and a dozen years removed from her last competition, Quinn shares that story to reiterate a simple message: “I get it,” she says. This week, she undoubtedly will incite ire and agony in equal measure. Sixteen women will compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials in Minneapolis; only five will be chosen to compete in Paris, and Quinn, the national team’s strategy lead, will help make the painful cuts.
Yet those three words — I get it — are why she and Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead, are here. They were not obvious choices. For the last 25 years, the women’s national team program has been led by older coaches with a wealth of experience. Quinn, whose focus is planning the overall strategy for the national team, worked on the development staff a decade ago and served on the board of directors for the Athlete Assistance Fund, a not-for-profit that provides financial assistance and counseling for gymnasts who were victims of…
