Katelyn Ohashi: a Stan Moment

Is Katelyn Ohashi the coolest girl ever to grace USAG?  Yes. 

Why is an adult female writing a creepy stan post about a teenage gymnast you ask?  Good question.  The reason is twofold.

1. Being at home with a perfect, precious 7 week old baby is boring as hell.  I literally have nothing better to do.  When I'm not feeding, changing, cleaning, or smooching my son, that is. 

2. We have suffered through years and years and YEARS of dull, robotic interviews from our favorite gymnasts.  Now we have the internetz, and with such we get treasured glimpses into our favorite athletes' lives.  Turns out their lives are kind of boring.  Turns out spelling and grammar aren't top priorities.  Turns out I sort of just feel like a creepy old lady stalking a bunch of teenagers. 

As as an apparent maternal adult stalker, it is my business to keep track of all these newfangled social media sites.  I suck at that, by the way.  I only learned of ask.fm about, oh, I'd say three days ago.  I'm pretty sure it's a site with the sole purpose of cyber bullying, but I digress.  For the life of me, I will never understand why asking random people random questions is so popular.  If I see another tweet containing "I HAVE TEN MINUTES.  ASK ME ANYTHING!!!111" I will probably do nothing.

Anyway, Katelyn's answers are actually funny.  Like FUNNY funny.  She seems like a smart girl who loves food and doesn't take herself too seriously.  And what's there not to love about that?  Oh and she's a stellar gymnast.  That too. 

Here are what I believe to be some of Ohashi's greatest hits.  And by hits I mean answers. 

i'm about to projectile express myself all over your hush puppies.

So, in light of my rant regarding internet bulldogs, I thought it would be beneficial to figure out if this was a recent development in gymnastics, or if this has, in fact, been a part of the sport all along.

I decided to travel back in time to October of 1996.  I brought the internet with me.

And what I found was a world not unlike today's.  People still had beef, fans still had their faves, and there was plenty of healthy speculation.

Let's have a look, shall we?

*So, the pics are super small.  Crud.  Just click on them, and you should be able to see them up close. 

Wow.  I had no idea how many people cared about Peggy Liddick leaving.  Perhaps it was the scandal of its time. 

Seems like no one gave a crap about those tours... that can't be right.  I LOVED the "real" tour starring the "Super Six."  Oh, and these two nameless extras... who were they again?  Oh.  That's right.  Kim Zmeskal and Lilia Podkopayeva.  Just them.  

Seems like the Shannon thread had a lot of looky loos, but not a lot of posters.  I imagine people were weary of igniting yet another Shannon vs. Gutsu/Moceanu/Dawes/More Gutsu debate. 

Hmm.  This one looks familiar...

And I swear I've seen this before.

Yup.  Fourteen years later, and Khorkina fans haven't changed one bit. 

I'd love to go even further back, and see what effect Barcelona would have had on the ol' message boards.  I'm pretty sure the whole internet would have just exploded. 

So, turns out that gym fans have been psychotic all along.  Now I know.

not everyone is gonna have the walnuts to take a pro-littering stance. but i will not rest until every inch of our fair state is covered in garbage.

OMG.  Somebody needs to buy this before I do.

Your very own team of Barbie gymnasts.

Obviously, these ones aren't as cool as mine.  Note the unitards.  But you could own your very own for significantly less than I paid.  Frick. 

The real Barbie on the left is useless, but the other four with their equipment would so be worth it.  Take it from me, having them do Amy Chow-style straddle paks on the bars is really fun. 

I'll write something more wonderful and fascinating later.  I also just want to say how cool it is to see people from all over the world reading this blog, thanks largely to Coach Rick over at http://gymnasticscoaching.com.  I'd by lying if I said I didn't feel some pressure now to actually write something interesting.   Don't hold your breath, but I'll try.

i don't trust a man with curly hair. i can't help picturing small birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and i find it disgusting.

Well, I went and did it again.

Although this time I was fully cognizant.  I knew what I wanted, and I went out to get it. 

Thanks to Ebay, I now have my hands on the gym dolls that I loved so much when I was a kid!

14 is still a kid.

I mean, what gym fan in her right mind wouldn't want one of these??  They were bendy, and came with their own apparatuses.  THEIR OWN APPARATUSES!!! 

So the bars are a little 70s-ish.  And the beam's a little short.  And I have no idea what that girl is doing on vault.... but that's not the point.  The point is, these are radical toys, and I love them.

Unfortunately, the kind lady on Ebay was only selling two out of the three.  However, since I just happen to have a third on hand, I can still field a whole team!  Because as we all know, it only takes three gymnasts to form a team. 

My first order of business, after ripping them out of the boxes, of course, was to make them some leotards.  I seriously can't stand this unitard bullcrap.

I set off to make my first leo, sewn together out of a pair of my fiance's old boxer shorts (shut up.)  It should go without saying that I am a horrible seamstress, and have little to no experience with sewing at all.

So yeah... the cut is just a tad Ivana-ish.  And the edges aren't what we'd call "even."  So, I fixed it up a bit, added something to cover her boobs, and made some sort of strappy thing in the back to keep her leo from being all ASU-y.

Hmm, in retrospect, that actually makes it MORE ASU-y.  Oh well.  I suppose it's appropriate, seeing as how I went there and all.  That also means I can make fun of them all I want.

Well, that first leo was a bust, so I went on to make my second one.  This time, instead of using old underwear, I want for a crusty old used sock instead.  Luckily, I went through an argyle phase, so I happened to have a ton of these patterned socks.  A couple of snips and some loose thread later, and voila!

Her face is just a tad dirty, but her awesome leo makes up for it.  Now THAT'S how you do argyle, Texas Dreams!

Three girls with fancy leos, and I finally had my team!  Please notice that they all have the requisite Nastia hair-poof. 

The poof, in addition to being the trend de jour, can also aid in balancing.

Oh, the possibilities!  What to have them do first... I could hook them up to the rings/tramp...  but I like this equipment so much more.  I give myself one week before I break the grips on bars.  One of the new girls also needs to sit in her splits for like a month.  Being in that weird high kick position while in the box for the past 15 years has left her rubber bands a little twisted.  Nothing some middle splits won't fix.

Next up: makeovers.