Don Peters

Last updated

Don Peters is a former American gymnastics coach and head coach of the United States women's gymnastics team at the 1984 Summer Olympics. He was hired as head coach SCATS Gymnastics, a gymnastics club in Huntington Beach, California.

Peters played football at Bellmar High School under coach Baptiste Manzini and later played at Belle Vernon Area High School. [1] He later attended West Chester University and was a member of the West Chester Golden Rams gymnastics team and was team captain for his last year. [1]

Peters coached at Grossfeld School of Gymnastics then later SCATS Gymnastics. [1] He became the head coach of the United States women's national artistic gymnastics team and oversaw their team silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics. [1]

In 2011, Peters was banned for life by USA Gymnastics after allegations surfaced that he had sexually assaulted three teenage gymnasts.

Related Research Articles

Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates all aspects of elite international competition. Within individual countries, gymnastics is regulated by national federations like British Gymnastics and USA Gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is a popular spectator sport at many competitions, including the Summer Olympic Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Béla Károlyi</span> Romanian-American gymnastics coach

Béla Károlyi is an ethnic Hungarian Romanian-American gymnastics coach. Early in his coaching career he developed the Romanian centralised training system for gymnastics. One of his earliest protégés was Nadia Comăneci, the first Olympic Games gymnast to be awarded a perfect score. Living under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Károlyi frequently clashed with Romanian officials. He and his wife defected to the United States in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Márta Károlyi</span> Hungarian-Romanian-USA gymnastics coach

Márta Károlyi is a Hungarian-American gymnastics coach and the former national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics. She and her husband, Béla, are ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania, Romania, who trained athletes in Romania before defecting to the United States in 1981. Béla and Márta Károlyi have trained nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists and many U.S. national champions, including Mary Lou Retton, Betty Okino, Kerri Strug, Teodora Ungureanu, Phoebe Mills, Nadia Comăneci, Kim Zmeskal, and Dominique Moceanu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USA Gymnastics</span> National gymnastics governing body

United States of America Gymnastics is the national governing body for gymnastics in the United States. Established in 1963 as the U.S. Gymnastics Federation (USGF), USA Gymnastics selects and trains the men's and women's national teams for the Olympic Games and World Championships. USAG sets the rules and policies that govern the sport of gymnastics, promotes the sport at all levels, and serves as a resource center for members, clubs, fans and gymnasts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valeri Liukin</span> Kazakh-American gymnast

Valeri Viktorovich Liukin is a Soviet-born Kazakh-American retired artistic gymnast turned gymnastics coach. As a competitor for the former Soviet Union, Liukin was the 1988 Olympic champion in the team competition and individually on the horizontal bar, and Olympic silver medalist in the all-around and the parallel bars.

Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center, widely known as Parkettes, is a gymnastics club located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Olympic Gymnastics Academy</span> Gymnastics

The World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA) is a two-facility gymnastics club located in Frisco and Plano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Australian Institute of Sport</span> Elite sports institute in Perth, Western Australia

The Western Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS) is an elite sports institute set up in 1983 by the Government of Western Australia to support athletes in Western Australia. Previously, if elite athletes from Western Australian needed to train or receive coaching at an international level they had to move to one of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) campuses which were generally based in the eastern states. The founding director was Wally Foreman who held the position for 17 years until 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gymnastics Australia</span> Australian gymnastics governing body

Gymnastics Australia (GA) is the governing body for the sport of gymnastics in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Chester Golden Rams</span> West Chester University of Pennsylvania sports teams

The West Chester Golden Rams represent West Chester University of Pennsylvania, which is located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in intercollegiate sports. They compete in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) in NCAA Division II.

Jennifer McIlveen is a retired artistic gymnast who competed for Great Britain in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and subsequently for the UCLA Bruins women's gymnastics team in the NCAA. In 2020, Pinches emerged as a prominent figure in the campaign against abusive coaching practices in gymnastics. becoming a co-founder of the charity Gymnasts for Change with athlete rights advocate, Claire Heafford.

Mitchell Ivey is a former American international swimmer who was a backstroke specialist and Olympic medalist. Ivey later became a prominent Olympic and college swimming coach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Naddour</span> American artistic gymnast

Alexander "Alex" Naddour is a former American artistic gymnast. He was part of the bronze medal team at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Naddour was an alternate for Team USA at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He also won a bronze medal on the pommel horse individual event competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He announced his retirement from gymnastics on March 26, 2021, via Instagram.

The USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center at Karolyi Ranch or simply Karolyi Ranch in unincorporated Walker County, Texas, southeast of Huntsville, was a gymnastics camp facility which was the site of the main training center for the United States women's national gymnastics team, located 70 miles (110 km) north of Houston within the Sam Houston National Forest. From 2001 to 2018, it was the USA Gymnastics' national training facility for women's artistic, trampoline, and rhythmic gymnastics disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Penny</span> American businessman and sports administrator

Stephen D. Penny Jr. is an American businessman and sports administrator. He was president and CEO of USA Gymnastics (USAG) from 2005 until 2017, and is a key figure in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Geddert</span> American gymnastics coach (1957–2021)

John Gerald Geddert was an American artistic gymnastics coach, who was a head coach of the gold-medal 2012 U.S. women's Olympic team and regular coach of team member Jordyn Wieber. He retired when suspended by USA Gymnastics in 2018 after being implicated in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal centered on his long-time associate Larry Nassar. Geddert committed suicide in 2021, shortly after being charged with 24 criminal charges, including 20 counts of human trafficking of a minor, one count each of first-degree criminal sexual assault, second-degree criminal sexual assault involving a minor, and lying to a police officer.

The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal relates to the sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts—primarily minors at the time of the abuse—over two decades in the United States, starting in the 1990s. More than 500 athletes alleged that they were sexually assaulted "by gym owners, coaches, and staff working for gymnastics programs across the country", including USA Gymnastics (USAG) and Michigan State University (MSU). It is considered the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Nassar</span> American physician, serial child molester

Lawrence Gerard Nassar is an American sports medicine physician who is a convicted sex offender and serial child molester. For 18 years, he was the team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team, where he used his position to exploit and sexually assault hundreds of young athletes.

<i>Athlete A</i> 2020 documentary film directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk

Athlete A is a 2020 American documentary film about the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal. Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, the documentary follows a team of investigative journalists from The Indianapolis Star as they broke the story of doctor Larry Nassar sexually assaulting young female gymnasts and the subsequent allegations that engulfed USA Gymnastics (USAG) and its then-CEO Steve Penny. It was released on June 24, 2020, by Netflix.

A variety of forms of abuse have been reported in gymnastics, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Abuse has been reported in multiple countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Herman, Brian (June 16, 2009). "Mid-Mon Valley Sports Hall of Fame Peters was football, gymnastics standout". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . Retrieved December 11, 2023.