KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Have a story idea to share with Tod? Send him an e-mail.
—
It’s been 20 years since Courtney McCool and Terin Humphrey became the first GAGE Center gymnasts to compete in the Olympic Games.
“Sometimes it seems like 20 years and then sometimes it just feels like yesterday,” GAGE Center owner and head coach Al Fong said.
McCool, an assistant gymnastics coach at LSU, goes by her married name, Courtney McCool Griffeth, these days.
She has two daughters, Rae and Blakely, with her husband Garrett, a fellow LSU assistant coach.
“Twenty years,” a wistful McCool Griffeth said. “I feel like the first decade, you still felt pretty close to it (the sport) then ... I feel like I blinked and we went from 10 to 20 years.”
McCool Griffeth, a Lee’s Summit North graduate, was part of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens — where she and Humphrey, an Odessa graduate, won a team silver medal.
It was a watershed moment for GAGE, which stands for Great American Gymnastics Express.
“We’ve always had that dream and that goal of raising Olympians, but that first time out and you get not one, but two athletes on the Olympics team — you’ll never forget that,” said Fong, who opened the GAGE Center in 1979.
McCool Griffeth and Humphrey remain prominent figures at the GAGE Center with massive posters of both athletes and the 2004 Olympic team overlooking the practice venue.
“I really like having them as role models,” GAGE gymnast Evelynn Lowe, who competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials last month, said. “Seeing them up there every single day, along with all the other ones, it’s just cool having something to look up to.”
After the Athens Olympics, McCool Griffeth became an All-American and NCAA champion at the University of Georgia before moving into the coaching ranks.
“I've had the honor of coaching a few — a couple, two or three GAGE athletes in college — and it's super special to me,” she said.
McCool Griffeth’s advice to the next generation of GAGE gymnasts — try not to be overwhelmed by outside or perceived pressure.
“Be where your feet are, be where you are, be in the moment you're in, be so present that you can't do anything but enjoy it,” McCool Grffeth said. “That’s what I would say.”
Fong said eight current GAGE gymnasts are training in hopes of qualifying for the 2028 Olympics Games in Los Angeles.
—