What happens to Stanford’s top athletes when the academic year comes to a close, the off-season is in full swing and dormmates and friends vacate the campus for two full months?
They become year-round students, stronger athletes and even closer friends with the teammates they spend 20-plus hours a week with in the gym and on the field. A look at the lives of some Stanford men’s gymnasts provides a glimpse at what’s happening with Cardinal athletes this week – and this summer.
A redshirt senior last year, team co-captain Greg Ter-Zakhariants had a busy start to his summer. After graduating in June with both his BA in Economics and MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Ter-Zakhariants joined his fellow college graduates in a painstaking job search. Dozens of applications and a handful of interviews later, Ter-Zakhariants recently landed a job with Professor Kathryn Shaw at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, in which he will research teacher labor markets and pay practices across the United States.
At the same time, Ter-Zakhariants still commits several hours a week to his beloved sport. While taking a break from personally training on his favorite events as he heals a back injury that has nagged him since the 2008-2009 season, Ter-Zakhariants coaches both his fellow teammates and aspiring young gymnasts in a club program. But ever the diligent athlete, he also runs the Dish four mornings a week to keep his body in shape.
Ter-Zakhariants’ 2009-10 co-captain and rising redshirt senior Abhinav Ramani is having an equally busy summer. From 9-5, he attempts to save the world by working as an R&D Engineer at a medical device company called NeoTract to redesign a product that treats a condition known as benign prostratic hyperplasia. After work, he spends approximately 16 hours per week learning new skills and sequences for next winter’s gymnastics season.
And as though he ever has a chance to miss his fellow gymnasts with all their team training throughout the academic year and off-season, Ramani is rooming with three of them this summer in Mountain View.
One of those roommates is rising senior Ryan Lieberman. The 2010 NCAA parallel bars champion, Lieberman is spending his summer even more immersed in NCAA life as a research assistant for Roger Noll, an economics professor. The research project? An exploration of NCAA Division 1 Coaching Salaries.
Like Ramani and Ter-Zakhariants, Lieberman spends much of his evening in the gym – four hours a day, to be exact. And in his downtime, this national champion likes to produce music. Perhaps a music career is next after gymnastics?
Two more men’s gymnastics roommates are rising senior Tim Gentry and rising redshirt junior Kyle Oi. Gentry, a two-time (and current) national team member, is spending his summer by adding to his educational background with CS106A and AA190. And according to him, he is spending “a lot” of hours in the gym.
Oi, like Gentry, is taking classes this summer. His intellectual capacity is filled with CS106A and Physics 28/29. As he comes back from a severe back injury, Oi also plans on training 15 hours a week this summer.
And while five gymnasts and their teammates are free of work, school, and training obligations for each other, they try to bond outside the gym. Oi says there will be plenty of barbecues and beach time throughout July and August, while the others speak excitedly about the team’s annual trip down to Los Angeles for the Fish Fry – a weekend of costumes, dancing, food and drinks hosted by former Stanford gymnast Eli Alcaraz, class of 2008.