Gymnastics, Grace, Deliverance

An Interview with Kim Hamilton Anthony Kim Hamilton Anthony's compelling new book, Unfavorable Odds , recounts the improbable story of a 5'7" African-American girl from a drug-ravaged neighborhood who rose to success in the well-heeled and overwhelmingly white sport of gymnastics. When other gymnasts were sound asleep, Kim was cleaning the gym or running a coat-check stand at a nightclub in order to earn money to pay for her training. Ultimately the sport delivered her from the dangerous neighborhood of her youth to the sun-drenched hills of UCLA, where she won four NCAA titles, met her eventual husband -- and became a devout Christian. Anthony was also a member of the national team from 1984-86, and represented the United States internationally, winning the South African Cup. She was a six-time All American, and in 2000 was only the second female gymnast inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame. She has gone on to a successful career in sports broadcasting, motivational speaking, and Christian ministry. She and her husband live in South Florida and serve as the chaplains for the Miami Dolphins and the Miami Dolphins Wives. Hers is an extraordinary story of courage and faith, and a testament to the power of sports to elevate individuals out of their immediate circumstances. The book can be purchased at her website as well as Amazon. Kim spoke to Timothy Dalrymple for the series on Faith, Gymnastics and Olympic Glory : You faced profound challenges few gymnasts face. How did race and class play into your experience as a gymnast? I was living in two different worlds, and it wreaked havoc on my identity. At home I lived in a predominantly African-American environment. I went to a public school that was predominantly African-American, and the people I hung around were in the same socioeconomic status I was. In the gym, it was the opposite. I had a hard time figuring out where I fit in. In practice, I spoke English correctly. To this day, I remember how embarrassed I was when a boy on the gymnastics team corrected my English, because I did everything I could to fit in and be exactly like everyone else. And since we could not afford my training, we raised money in unconventional ways. My parents and I cleaned the gym after practice at night, or very early in the morning, before we left for work and school. I performed gymnastics at a nightclub. We would set up a coat check stand and people paid a dollar or two to check their coats and hats, and I performed under the disco ball after midnight, to show them where their money was going. I entered talent contests and did gymnastics routines to win money to pay for my leotards or travel expenses or training. While my teammates were in their beds all warm and cozy, I was walking the street at four o'clock in the morning, returning from the nightclub where I had been raising money for my training. On other nights, I would work out until ten o'clock, and then sometimes we would clean the gym right after practice. But if we were too tired, then we would wake up to clean it at five in the morning on the next day. So my experience as a gymnast was quite different, but I never shared those things with my teammates. I didn't want there to be just another thing that separated us. I was also in an environment surrounded by drugs. There was a lot going on. Did gymnastics help to keep you away from the drugs? No, it didn't. Drugs were in my home. It was so common that I didn't even realize the legal issues surrounding it until I was in college. That's how common it was, not only for my household but my surroundings. I imagine that the drugs created even more of a tension between your setting in the gym and your setting at home. Here's a story I didn't share in the book. I remember one of my teammates coming over to play on a Saturday after practice. We just did what girls do. We played around and had fun for a couple hours. Then my father came home with his friends, and they were about to do what they usually did. I remember being so embarrassed because I thought that they would do their drugs while she was in the house. I didn't want that to happen, so I begged my mother to ask daddy to wait until after this girl leaves before they start doing that, because I would be so embarrassed. That was one of the struggles that I had. We grew marijuana in the house as though it was a houseplant. So when a gymnast came over, I would pray that they wouldn't recognize what kind of plants those were. They never did. It was rough for me. On the one hand, I was trying to hide this other life from my teammates. On the other hand, if I used proper English around my cousins or other family members, they would make fun of me and say that I was trying to be white. Here I am, this little black girl, and I didn't fit in socially at the gym. Yet I didn't fit into the environment I was growing up around, either, because I was a gymnast and I had been exposed to things others hadn't been exposed to. It was a difficult time for me. Do you feel that gymnastics broadened your horizons? Did it give you a larger sense of life's possibilities? In that sense, do you think gymnastics helped you out of a setting of drugs and violence? Yes, absolutely. I know that God used gymnastics to save me. Gymnastics saved me from a lot of madness and mess. I have people I went to school with who are dead now, or who are strung out on drugs, or who are on welfare having multiple children to collect more welfare. Had I not had gymnastics practice to go to, to keep me out of that environment, that would have been me. I am sure of it. Had I not had gymnastics at UCLA and mandatory drug testing, that would have been me. I was not a strong person. I grew up in a household where there was some verbal abuse and things going on that caused me to withdraw and not share with people. I was very quiet and had all these stresses on my mind. I think gymnastics just did wonders, especially in terms of exposing me to the lifestyles of other people. I look back and I am thankful that God had me traveling the world while I was young, had me staying in the homes of people who had different types of careers. I saw that there was more to life than my city block. So, take us a little further in the story. You left home and enrolled at UCLA. How did you become a Christian? I was actually visiting Corwin [now her husband]. We had just started seeing each other. I went to see him on a Sunday, and the football players at UCLA stay in the Suites. I went over to his suite and saw a Bible on his desk. I remember thinking, "What in the world is a Bible doing on his desk?" I knew that they had Bibles in hotel rooms, so I thought that maybe they had Bibles in their dorms. I asked him whose Bible it was, and he told me it was his. I thought he was lying, so I said, "Well, what did you do today?" He told me that he had gone to church. Again, I thought he was trying to impress me. "Well," I said, "what did you learn in church today?" I wanted him to prove that he had gone to church. Corwin is one of those guys who can hear a message and repeat it all back to you. So he went through the scripture the pastor went through, and shared with me exactly what he had learned. That's when I knew. I had already known there was something special about him, because he was so different than anyone I had met. But that's when I started realizing that it was his faith that made him different. We continued to see one another, and then one day he worked up the nerve to share with me "The Four Spiritual Laws." So we sat on his bed in his dorm room, and he shared the Four Spiritual Laws with me. Now, mind you, it was my sophomore year when I met him. The previous summer, something important had happened in my life. I had gone out late at night with friends to a Burger King restaurant. There were some words exchanged between the guys in our group and some guys in the parking lot. We thought the incident was over, but when we walked up into the front of the restaurant, I remember hearing this guy screaming and yelling, coming up from behind me. When I turned around, I found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. This young man was screaming and telling me he was going to kill me while he held this gun only an inch away from my forehead. Now, before gymnastics became a mainstay in my life, I had based my value on how I could handle drugs, how I could roll joints. Then at UCLA I started basing my value on my ability to perform gymnastics. But at that moment, with the gun at my head, everything I had looked to in order to give me value or worth was worth absolutely nothing. I was able to walk away from that moment unharmed, but I walked away thinking there had to be more to life than this. It was the very next year that I met Corwin, and we were sitting in his room and he's sharing the gospel. As he shared the Four Spiritual Laws, I had never even come close to hearing those words before. I had been to church when I was little, but I had never heard the gospel so clearly presented. I knew then and there that Jesus was what I needed, was what I had been searching for all those years. Because I was searching for something. I didn't know what it was or what form it would take. But I knew from that moment on that God was real. God being real was something that I had struggled with throughout my life. As a child, I didn't know if it would be like Santa Claus, where I would grow up and learn there was no God. But as Corwin shared with me, I just knew this was it. I prayed right then and there to receive Christ. And that's when the change began. That's when I started believing that maybe I wasn't a mistake. All my life I had been told that I was a mistake, because my parents had been unmarried teenagers when my mother got pregnant. For the first time, I heard that God has a plan for my life. I'm thinking, me ? Even me? I was truly excited to finally know that God is real, and He loved me and had a purpose for me. I wasn't one of a gazillion people He just threw here on earth. He actually has a plan for me. Other gymnasts I've interviewed were Christians from the start. You have a rare perspective. How was your experience as a gymnast different after you became Christian? Oh, it changed dramatically. Before I came to know Christ, I was a very sad person. I had many things in my life that made me melancholy. Since I found my self-worth in my gymnastics, everything I did as a gymnast either gave me value or took it away. But when I came to know Christ, I learned that God created me and loved me whether or not I performed well on the beam. So I began to understand the unconditional love God has for us, and the value He places on us. I was able to approach gymnastics with a completely different mindset. I no longer approached it as though it were a do-or-die situation. Instead, I saw it as my opportunity to honor Christ by using the talent he has given me. Gymnastics, for me, was a form of worship. I know that might sound crazy. But it was my way of performing for an audience of one. If faith shaped your experience as a gymnast, how did your experience as a gymnast shape your faith? How did it influence what you believe and what you value? That's a good question -- and a hard one. For me, gymnastics is symbolic of life. Period. It's a microcosm. The sport taught me discipline, goal-setting, and the patience to learn a new skill. That carries over spiritually. In your walk with Christ, it takes discipline to spend time in his word, and patience to learn and grow and get to the place where He wants you to be -- which is ultimately to be more like Christ himself. So I look at gymnastics as a metaphor for my walk with Christ since it does take discipline and persistence. You may not see the results you want right away, but God has a plan for us. And if we are persistent and continue to walk in the way we know we should go, then we end up at our goal. For Christians, of course, that ultimate goal may not happen here on earth, but we know it will happen. As it says in the Bible: "We run the race to win." And we have to buffet our bodies in order to do that. I always think about us training. And in a sense we're actually training spiritually, so that when those glory days come, we can be ready and all the better for it. If you had the opportunity to speak with a young gymnast who wished to grow in his or her faith even while pursuing excellence in the sport, what advice would you give? I would tell them something about what I'm focusing on this year, which is discipline, clarity, and obedience. I would say to discipline yourself in your walk with God, just as you discipline yourself to train in gymnastics. When I say to discipline yourself, I mean that we should read the Word. Don't neglect spending time alone in the Word, then God will give you clarity, as you read His word. And surround yourself with the right people, the people who have the same goal of growing in Christ. I'm not saying that you should only hang around Christians, but make sure the people in your immediate circle have the same values and the same interests. Finally, I believe that once God gives us clarity, we need to be obedient. Sometimes God wants us to be obedient even when what He is asking from us does not seem to make sense. Since God sees the whole picture, it's important for us to trust him. I would also encourage young gymnasts to understand that their value truly is not based on their athletic accomplishments. No matter what happens on that floor, no matter what the judges say or what people think, they need to walk out there and perform their very best for God. Envision God watching us do what He created us to do. When God watches us do what He created us to do, I believe He truly is smiling. I believe it gives Him great joy. Learn more about Kim Hamilton Anthony at her website. For other articles and interviews like this, see the series on Faith, Gymnastics and Olympic Glory , or visit the Evangelical Portal.