James Sergeant:  

Life After finishing playing football my senior year, I started gymnastics in the Spring of 1978 at a small club in Richardson with my brothers who were in college. They had already taught me handstands and back handsprings. I started working out every day and was hooked. I turned down a partial engineering scholarship to SMU to take a partial scholarship to UTA in Aerospace Engineering, since SMU didn't have an aero program. UTA actually had some pretty good gymnastics instructors over the years, not really coaches since there was not an NCAA program but just a sports club team. My instructors included a USA team coach and a Japanese national team member (who also was a PhD in exercise physiology - we were his lab rats too). We formed the Texas Gymnastics Conference in 1979 to set up a competitive conference for club teams at TX universities (UT, A&M, Tech, etc.). My brother still runs the conference and I help out. Anyway, I climbed my way to the top of the bottom in gymnastics. I won parallel bars and vault and finished second all around at my last conference state meet in 1983. After I graduated with my aero engineerig degree and started working, I could afford to travel so I competed at some open meets for fun in other parts of the country. In fact my last competion (to date) was in 2000 at the Senior Olympics in LA (sounds big but it wasn't - just a bunch of old guys - but the rope climb event is still awesome!). Funny thing is that in 1981 I started judging and turned out to be better at it than I was a competitor (which isn't saying too much). So although I couldn't do a lot of the big tricks I could judge them (it's easy being a critic). I've had a men's international judges rating since 1985. I judge a lot of junior and high school meets, some NCAA and college, and some international meets, though just smaller international meets here in the US. No Olympics yet, and that's another story.... Fort Worth hosted ...Expand for more