Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams [Hardcover]

Jennifer Sey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2008

Published just as all eyes are on the young female gymnasts competing for a ticket to Beijing on the 2008 Olympic team, "Chalked Up" presents the story of the 1986 US National Gymnastics champion whose life long dream was to compete in the 1988 Olympics - until anorexia, injuries, coaching abuses, and parental hopes and neglect nearly destroyed her. Fanciful dreams of gold medals and Nadia Comaneci led Jennifer Sey to the sport of gymnastics at the age of six. Early success propelled her forward.Her family, seduced by the notion of their young daughter as a champion, complied with her every wish as she strove to become better. By the age of eleven, it all seemed to be coming together for her when she qualified for the nationally competitive elite level, the highest in U.S. gymnastics. "Chalked Up" is Sey's personal story in competitive gymnastics and also the story of the ways her needs were subsumed by the adults around her. It is about the meaninglessness of second place in a culture that places winning above all else. It is about the destruction waged by eating disorders. It is about a specific a culture in which underage and underweight girls are celebrated as cultural icons.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sey writes of her career in internationally competitive gymnastics, which culminated when she won the 1986 U.S. national championship at age 17. From the start Sey was an underdog, ever the second-best athlete on the team hoping to prove herself with tenacity and toughness. She endured numerous injuries—including a broken femur, which could have ended her career—as well as an eating disorder, depression, isolation and tremendous strain on her family. With each new sacrifice that her parents and brother made to support her, the stakes crept higher, inuring them all to gymnastics' inherent physical and psychological trauma. After claiming the U.S. title, Sey was shell-shocked and exhausted, suddenly robbed of her lifelong motivation. I'd always been a fighter, a come-from-behind girl. Now that I was on top, the battle would be unwinnable. The memoir's poignant glimpses at Sey's adult struggle to reckon with her past are regrettably sparse, and her prose occasionally lapses into wordiness, but overall, she has written a courageous story befitting a comeback kid—a timely release for the 2008 Olympics. (May)
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From Booklist

Sey was the 1986 U.S. national gymnastics champion, but since gymnastics is a sport that only captures the fancy of the general populace during Olympic years, she is relatively unknown outside the sport’s inner circle. Joan Ryan exposed many of female gymnastics’ abuses in her classic Little Girls in Pretty Boxes (1996), but Sey adds to that sad story (her lengthy subtitle conveys much of the substance of her years as an elite gymnast). She acknowledges that her obsessively competitive personality may have simply found a venue in which to flourish, but the demands placed upon her by club coaches and parents surely exacerbated the situation. Sey’s parents moved so she could train with the right coaches, then virtually ignored their younger son and nearly lost their marriage along the way. Through it all, Sey suffered an adolescence of eating disorders, endured numerous broken bones, and viewed every element of her life through the distorting prism of competition. It’s a fascinating and disturbing book and certainly the young year’s front-runner for most literate and painfully honest sports autobiography. --Wes Lukowsky

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (April 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061351466
• ISBN-13: 978-0061351464
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Gymnastics

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why all the fuss?, May 7, 2008

By 

K.K. Turner "BerkeleygirlArmywife" (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams (Hardcover)

Like Jenn and Betty who have already posted their reviews, I was a Parkette with Jen Sey from 1985-1987. Before Jenn and I moved in with J. Sey, we lived with some other girls in Jessica's (who has also posted) parent's house (who took in boarders living away from home). Jessica was already in college by the time I got there in 1985.

I can tell you from first hand experience that what we ate was monitered and sometimes reported to the Strausses. The only thing we were allowed to have without asking was water. It was just the way it was and we all accepted it because like Jen, we all wanted to be champions. The things that Jessica claims are outright lies happened after she had left. She claims to have talked to 20 girls who trained with us during that time but she certainly hasn't talked to me (or Jen, Tracy, Betty, etc).

In her review and her comments on NPR (which seemed pretty scripted to me), Jessica gets very caught up on specific examples Jen gives (like Mr. Strauss throwing a chair "AT" a gymnast). I mean, what are you saying Jess, that he did throw a chair, but just in her general direction...so it wasn't that big of a deal? Also, the announcement over the loudspeaker about a young gymnast's 2 lb weight gain and telling her she's going to look like her obese mother if she wasn't careful. Come on...those of us who were there remember how much grief she used to get about her parents size.

What I don't get, as one reviewer said above, is why all the outrage? This is Jen's story. Many of us lived it right along side with her (although it's fascinating how much we actually isloated ourselves from each other during that time...even though we were all living together and going through the same stuff). I think those who are taking such umbrage to the book are missing the bigger picture. Nobody who was there during that time can possibly refute the fact that there was an extremely unhealthy emphasis on our weight. The only nutritional guidance we ever received was to eat less. All of us were terrified of the weigh-in (I remember being one of the many girls spitting in the sink, taking their bras and barretts off and actually trying to cry to loose water weight in the locker room before we got weighed). We WERE berated and shamed about our weight...that is a fact.

I think the message in Jen's book is pretty clear. All of us who were there CHOSE to be there. Chose to accept the good and the bad that came with being a Parkette during that time period. The questions she raises, in telling her story, about the role of coaches and parents are important to think about. We were willing to make the sacrifices because we wanted to succeed. Since I was living away from home my parents only knew what I chose to tell them...which wasn't very much. If I had told them some of the things that went on, I wonder what they would have done. Would they have yanked me out of there kicking and screaming? That's what I was afraid of and that's why I never told them. Could the adults in our lives (both coaches and parents) have done better...yes.

Finally, Jen has not contradicted herself in interviews. She has always maintained that this is her story and not meant to be an indictment of the sport itself. Her facts are fine...I was there, I remember. Jen, I'm proud of you...it had to a difficult story to put down on paper. And Jessica, if you, and any other of the twenty former Parkettes you mention, want to tell "your" story...write your own damn book!

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a sad but brutally honest look at women's elite gymnastics, April 25, 2008

By 

Alicia Thompson "young adult author" (Riverview, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams (Hardcover)

I didn't get into gymnastics until 1996, so I was unfamiliar with Jennifer Sey until I read this book. After reading it, however, I felt like I could really empathize with her, as well as her family and teammates (it was harder to empathize with the coaches, I admit). On the surface, it may seem like this book is a scandalous expose, and I have no doubt that many people will read it as such. But to me, it was a coming-of-age story about a girl who got swept up in a subculture that, unfortunately, tends to lead to disordered thinking about pressure, body image, injury, and "normal" life.

Jennifer Sey does a great job in this book of explaining all the factors that led to her success in gymnastics, as well as her ultimate downfall -- the need for achievement, need to please, competitiveness, and perfectionism. She's fair when it comes to explaining her parents' or coaches' roles, while at the same time taking responsibility for what was her dream.

For me, this was an incredibly thought-provoking book. Not only is it an interesting subject, but the prose is fluid and powerful, helping the reader get into the mindset of an elite gymnast who is training on a broken ankle, competing on the world stage, and lost in a lonely world where being a gymnast is her only identity.

This book is about gymnastics on the surface, but really it has a lot more depth. It's about a relationship of a daughter with her mother, and the sacrifices a parent will make for her child's dream -- even long after the daughter stops wanting it. It's about a child's need to find something that defines her, even if it swallows her whole. It's about the choices we must make when something that we're good at or used to enjoy stops being fun, or stops being a place where we can shine. It's about a woman struggling to become comfortable in her own skin after her body and her mind force her out of the only identity she's known.

This was a beautiful, moving book. I would recommend it to anyone.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Her story speaks for many..., June 11, 2008

By 

Kris Bagiu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams (Hardcover)

I was a gymnast of the 1980s at SCATS in Huntington Beach, CA (then west coast rivals of Parkettes), under the direction of Don Peters. As Class I gymnasts (today's Level 10s) our workouts were combined with the confirmed Elite level athletes, many who were national team members with Jennifer. I was eager to read her book because she was someone I hadn't met but had heard about through the slumber party stories and post-meet adventure chatter at the gym.

It wasn't the tell-all I was expecting, it felt very much like my own story minus the part where I win the 1986 National Championships. I was embarrassed to read her account of Peters giving the "fat speech" before the World Championships-- I thought those speeches were reserved for the members of our private gym where we had daily weight checks. We protected our bulemic and anorexic girls, covered weight gains with really good stories. I even took the fall for one high ranking gymnast's binge and purge weekend when food went missing, rather than out her. I was shocked to read about the chair being thrown at a gymnast-- I thought only our coaches threw tantrums and objects. It felt "good" to hear that I wasn't the only one who had foul language directed at me in the gym. I have a strange sense of peace knowing that we weren't alone. I hear thanks to my injuries I was one of the most expensive gymnasts at SCATS in my time. And it's thanks to those injuries I burned out before I could earn even a bottom of the barrel college scholarship. Where's my: I did my best in gymnastics for 10 years and all I got was a rib removed, a broken foot, a reconstructed ankle, and a broken wrist!" t-shirt?

To the people taking issue with Jennifer's account I say if your experience was different, it was just that: different. Sometimes we feel it necessary to call the dissenter a liar to protect ourselves or correct it with our own version of what we believed happened. 1980s gymnastics was crazy and it's thanks to the gymnasts of that era it is much improved.

To my friend Jen, thank you.