LAKEPORT, Calif. – Two young male gymnasts are set to make local history this weekend as they become the first in the sport from Lake County to compete at a state championship.
Tanner Broyles, 12, of Kelseyville and Catch Devore, 13, of Lakeport are traveling to San Luis Obispo for the NorCal Level 4-5 State Championships, where they will compete on Saturday.
The boys are Level 5 Junior Olympic Region 1 gymnasts, and have advanced farther than any young gymnasts from Lake or Mendocino counties, said Roger Devore, their coach, Catch's dad and owner of Skycatch Gymnastics in Lakeport.
Region 1 includes parts of California, Nevada and Oregon, Devore said. They'll be competing against 37 other young gymnasts age 11 and up.
If they qualify, they will go on the regional championships in April in Santa Clara.
“It's a big deal,” said Devore.
Devore said they'll compete in six disciplines – pommel horse, high beam, vault, rings, floor exercise and parallel bars.
He pointed out that each of those disciplines comes from a different continent, underlining the truly international nature of gymnastics, a sport where he said competitors can't cheat and have only one chance to get it right.
On Wednesday night the boys were fine tuning their skills for this weekend, with Devore keeping a close eye on their form and giving them constructive feedback with a lot of praise. He calls gymnastics “body Lego's” because of the way skills and strength are built.
They took turns on the parallel bars and pommel horse, swinging effortlessly and balancing on strong, slender arms.
It's all made to look deceptively easy, and magically graceful.
It is, of course, the result of years of dedication and practice – even at their young ages.
Both boys have been practicing gymnastics since they were small, and now have more than 5,000 hours each of training, said Devore.
That includes working out three days a week, for three hours each session. In the run up to the weekend competition, Devore said they've added a fourth three-hour practice session.
“It doesn't happen overnight,” said Annette Broyles, on hand to watch her son, Tanner, and his 9-year-old brother, Trey.
Both Tanner and Trey have been in gymnastics training for seven and a half years, according to their mother.
Gymnastics has a history in Broyles' family. She herself was a gymnast as a youngster, and her father was a gymnast in West Germany.
“We had rings in our backyard,” she remembered.
Her father died four years ago, and didn't have the chance to see his grandsons compete. However, Broyles said, “He would be so proud.”
Catch and Tanner are now in Level 5, which is when most male gymnasts start to drop out of the sport, said Broyles.
However, neither of them are showing any interest in leaving the sport where they're enjoying success, and they anticipate moving up into Level 6 at the end of this season. The competitive seasons run from December to March.
Tanner said he likes “everything” about the sport. He's dropped out of all other school sports to focus on gymnastics.
At the same time, the boys are keeping up good grades and have plans for the future.
Both boys say they have dreams of attending Stanford University – a bastion of male gymnastics that consistently produces some of the sport's best competitors – and eventually going on to compete in the Olympic Games.
They competed earlier this season at the Stanford Open, putting in strong performances. This summer, they'll return to Stanford for a gymnastics camp that is attended by the best gymnasts in the nation, Devore said.
Do they get nervous about competing?
“In the beginning we did, but now we don't,” said Tanner, who like Catch shows enormous control and poise on and off the mat. “We're used to it.”
Instead, they're excited about what's ahead at the weekend competition, their sixth meet as the season comes to an end.
The evolution of a gym
Skycatch Gymnastics is the gym that has produced the two talented young athletes.
Skycatch has been located at 888 Lakeport Blvd. in the Vista Point Shopping Center, for not quite a year, Devore said. It's a large, open space, with mats on the floors and apparatus stationed around the room, along with weight training equipment.
Devore said the gym, open seven days a week, currently has between 225 and 250 children participating in its programs, from toddlers up to the teens. They also aim to offer adult classes in the future.
They also have a Saturday night event where parents can drop off children from 6 to 9 p.m. Children don't have to be gymnasts to participate, and for $15 per child – or $25 for two – they get three hours of gym play time and pizza.
Both Devore and his wife, Jerae, coach at the gym, and both were competitive gymnasts. He competed from age 6 to 17.
He has been coaching for 29 years, nine of them as the coach and owner of Skycatch, which grew out of the former Luanne's Gymnastics, where he and his wife had coached. When the owner retired, she asked the Devores to take over.
However, they needed equipment, and Devore credits his coach, Steven Klotz of Redwood Empire Gymnastics in Petaluma, for getting them what they needed.
Some of the apparatuses in the gym are the same ones Devore used when he was a young gymnast.
Pointing, he said, “That pommel horse is probably 60 years old,” noting the equipment is made to last.
The Devores made sacrifices and lived with family during the first year that they worked to get the gym off the ground.
Devore said the gym name is a combination of the names of his children – daughter Skylar and son Catch – in honor of the sacrifices they made during the gym's inception.
Today, as he continues to build the gym, Devore – in addition to being a proud dad of a talented young gymnast – said he feels like the luckiest coach on the planet.
“California is the hotbed of gymnastics on planet Earth,” said Devore, noting that the majority of the US gymnasts competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were from California.
In addition to Catch and Tanner, the gym has other talented young male gymnasts who are coming up, including 9-year-old Trey Broyles, Alex Fordham, 8, and Jeremy Foster, 11, all of whom were on hand for practice Wednesday night.
There are other big happenings for the gym on the horizon in the coming year, as Devore looks forward to the debut of Skycatch's girls gymnastics team.
Devore urges people to watch out for the team, which he said has huge talent and momentum.
Anyone interested in sponsoring the gym and its athletes or who would like more information about the programs can call Jerae Devore at 707-490-6053 or visit the gym on Facebook.
Email Elizabeth Larson at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.