Jaime Lapides
I began my journey in gymnastics long before I ever touched an apparatus. Growing up in Euclid, Ohio, I attended a high school with no men’s gymnastics program, yet from childhood I knew the sport was meant to be part of my life. I wanted to be a gymnast, and ultimately, a coach. When my older sister joined her high school team, I helped her refine skills, and soon I was assisting the cheerleaders as well. Even without formal training, the sport had already taken root in me.
During my senior year, I spent hours in the library researching gymnastics, determined to find a way in. Before my family moved to Miami, Florida in the summer of 1972, I had already identified the best place to begin: Miami‑Dade Junior College, under the guidance of Coach Bruce Davis, brother of Olympian Muriel Evelyn (Davis) Grossfeld.
My passion for movement had been visible even earlier. At Euclid High School, friends noticed me constantly walking on my hands or balancing on the rings that hung in one of the school’s four gymnasiums. They began training with me, and soon I discovered a weekend trampoline program at the YMCA run by Bill Copp, with occasional help from Ron Munn. It wasn’t gymnastics, but it offered something precious — airtime, twisting, flipping, and the beginnings of body awareness. Every Saturday morning, no matter the snow or cold, I warmed up my car, picked up my friends one by one, and by 9 a.m. we were bouncing religiously.
Within days of arriving in Miami, I walked into Bruce Davis’s office, introduced myself, and explained that I planned to enroll and join the team — despite having no formal experience. What I did have was a foundation built years earlier at Stanford‑Foster Dance Studio in Euclid, where my sisters and I took acrobatics. There I learned cartwheels, walkovers, handsprings, flips, and even adagio. I became strong enough to lift and flip my sister in double stunts, and soon the owners asked me to assist with spotting and teaching. I was also invited into ballet classes to partner with the girls and even asked to MC recitals at age fifteen. Though ballet wasn’t my passion, the vocabulary and discipline I learned would later become invaluable when I began coaching women’s gymnastics.
At Miami‑Dade, my acrobatic background and strength helped me progress quickly — though still at a beginner level — while my coaching abilities accelerated even faster. Bruce invited me to teach at his private school, Muriel Grossfeld’s School of Gymnastics in North Miami, and I soon found myself learning more as a teacher than as a gymnast. I also began helping my college teammates with their skills, training alongside future greats such as Kurt Thomas, Ron Galimore, and Danny Price.
By my second year, I was an assistant women’s team coach at the private school, which Bruce later moved to an airplane hangar at Opa‑Locka Airport and renamed Gymiami. There, I coached elite gymnasts while continuing to compete at the college. My gymnastics ability had limits due to my late start, but my coaching ability flourished. During this time, I wrote an article on spotting techniques that was published in Gymnast Magazine.
When Bruce took a sabbatical, Don Gutzler, Kurt Thomas’s high school coach and Bruce’s partner at the private gym, stepped in as head coach. After Don left the college, the Athletic Director asked me — still only a few years older than my teammates — to take over as head coach and lead the men’s team to Nationals. I had earned the trust of both my peers and the administration.
Meanwhile, Gymiami had become the dominant program in southeastern Florida and one of the top three in Region 8. The AAU had given way to the USGF, and our elite gymnasts competed in both the Class I and Elite programs. I coached all four women’s events, though Bruce often placed me at bars. In 1975, one of our gymnasts, Debbie Reiser, won first place in Class I Nationals compulsories, and later that month, first place at Elite Nationals compulsories — beating every future Olympian. She was flawless. When we returned home, people told me they had seen me coaching on Wide World of Sports.
During those years, I also had the privilege of meeting and learning from many of the most influential figures in American gymnastics. Whether or not they would remember me today — people like Abie and Donna Strauss, Tammy Biggs, Jackie Fie, Rita Brown, Tad White, Cindy McLane, Matt Reynolds, René Nicoli, Don Peters, and many others — their impact on me was lasting. I still have cassette tapes of lectures I recorded from some of these great minds. I met George Nissen, the father of the modern trampoline, and wrote to Glenn Sundby expressing my interest in teaching acrobatic sports; he responded by sending me a generous stack of Acro magazines at no charge. I was present in the late 1970s when the national Safety Certification program was first introduced and became one of its earliest certified coaches — D.J. Milem was among the certifiers. I traveled with our women’s team across the country — California, the Midwest, the East Coast, the South — sometimes alone, handling all logistics and coaching responsibilities despite being only a few years older than the girls. In my final year at Gymiami, I also coached the boys’ team. One of those boys, Tom Riether, later became an Olympic pole vaulter. Another was Dave Gutting, son of the legendary Dick Gutting.
​
I coached at Gymiami until 1980, when I entered an apprenticeship in air conditioning, refrigeration, and ventilation. My plan was to earn enough to eventually open my own gym. In those days, unless you owned a facility, it was nearly impossible to make a living coaching. Life, however, took its own course, and I never returned to gymnastics full‑time.
I continued coaching in various capacities — including an acrobatic dance team at Peaches School of Dance, and later at Tim Rand’s Twisters in Pompano, where my children trained. Tim and his partner, Paul MacAloon, invited me to join their team coaching staff, but the recession ended my apprenticeship pause, and I returned to my trade. I left Twisters just before Tim announced his engagement to State Gymnastics Director Toni Lefleur.
Years later, during a difficult period in my personal life, I was invited to coach at Park Avenue Gymnastics, run by Stuart Greenberg. Despite warnings from his departing partner, I accepted the position. Our philosophies clashed — I was elite‑minded, and he was not interested in pursuing championships. After three months, I returned once again to air conditioning.
Though I never opened my own gym and never returned to the sport permanently, I have always regarded myself first and foremost as a gymnastics coach. Everything else has been a sideline. Gymnastics was — and remains — the gift God placed in my hands. Life simply unfolded while I was doing other things.
And even now, I miss the sport terribly.