Jeremy Waters
October 24, 2017 15:20
Before I get into the details of this gym, I think I should outline my background and my experience with NRG.
I was a member of the boys team at NRG for 7-ish years (the last two of them under Benji). After leaving NRG, I continued in the sport of gymnastics both as a gymnast and as a coach; I have now been coaching for 12 years and counting.
What makes or breaks a gym is the coaching, and I simply cannot leave a positive review for a gym whose head coach is Benji. Of the 7 years I spent there, five were excellent and helped shape me into who I am today; the final two (under Benji) were miserable and demoralizing, and in retrospect it's a wonder my love for the sport survived those two seasons.
Benji always has to have a whipping boy; that is, there is always one team member who he bullies relentlessly. No matter how hard this kid works, Benji will say they are lazy and pathetic ("pathetic" being one of his favorite insults to hurl at his students). No matter what this kid says, Benji will interpret every word out of their mouth as an affront to his authority. I saw this happen to a teammate, who eventually quit, then it happened to me until I left for another gym, then it happened to another teammate of mine after I left, and even seeing his team at meets afterwards it has always been pretty easy to pick out who the whipping boy is. He always has one.
While some of this can perhaps be written off as an issue of coach/athlete compatibility, it is simply not acceptable for any coach to bully their gymnasts the way Benji often did. Under no circumstances should a coach be calling their athletes "pathetic," let alone doing so on a daily basis. Furthermore, the fact that he always has one, and when that one quits he immediately moves on to the next, suggests that these issues have little to do with the athletes and everything to do with the coach.
It gives me some pain to leave this review, as the owners are wonderful people and I have nothing negative to say about them. However, I firmly believe that anybody with an apparently-pathological need to bully (such as Benji seems to have) should not be permitted to work with kids, and it is for this reason that I cannot recommend this gym to anybody.