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Donald R. Shepherd Women's Gymnastics Training Center
View new panoramic photos of Shepherd

Shepherd CenterThe 22,000-square-foot facility, made possible by a $3.5 million gift from Shepherd, a Michigan alumnus, is the new practice and training home of the Wolverines. The state-of-the-art complex has 17,000 square feet of training area which is outfitted with the latest in gymnastics training equipment, including resi- and free-foam pits at each event. There is an additional 5,000 square feet which houses a training room, offices for the coaching staff, a locker room, a team lounge, and a study area for the student-athletes.

WOLVERINE DREAM:
Thanks to a generous donor, the Michigan Women's Gymnastics Team is practicing in paradise
By Jessica Steyers (circa 2002)

Walking from the entrance to the floor exercise area in the University of Michigan's old women's practice facility carried a high degree of difficulty. One wrong step and you could get hurt. The safest path followed the edge of the beam dismount mats, a balancing act itself. Veer off the mats and you're in the path of an oncoming vaulter. Step too far onto the mats and you could get clobbered by a beam dismount. And that's before you even got to the uneven bars and tumbl-trak.

Shepherd Center Locker RoomThose weren't the only traffic hazards in the Sports Coliseum. The gym had two resi-pits: one for vault, the other for bars, beam and tumbling. The latter could handle one gymnast at a time. If you fell off one beam, it was possible to jump onto a nearby trampoline. Then there's assistant coach Scott Sherman, the team's primary spotter, who logged many miles running back and forth across the gym to spot every landing.

When Michigan alumnus Donald Shepherd visited the Coliseum back in 1999, his first thought was, "Gosh, you're a bit cramped in here."

"Well, it's not ideally what we would like," Head Coach Beverly Plocki told him. "But we make it work."

The Coliseum had been renovated once since Plocki's arrival to the Ann Arbor campus in 1990. Along with adding resi-pits, a permanent wall was installed to replace an old green curtain that separated the gymnastics equipment from basketball courts. Finally, the facility was comparable to others across the country. But not for long.

In 1992, Oregon State received a donation to renovate its practice facility, which started a chain reaction across the country. "It was all the buzz that Oregon State's facility was so beautiful," Plocki says. "Then Alabama built one, Georgia, West Virginia, Auburn, everyone."

Shepherd PlaqueEveryone but Michigan. Within a few years, Plocki's 7,000-square-foot gym paled in comparison. She tried to gain support of the athletic department, but it wasn't easy. "If you're not moving forward you're falling behind, and that's the concept I tried to get across to the athletic department," she says. She eventually fought her way onto a list of new facilities promised by the athletic department. Then administrative shifts changed the department's priorities. A new women's gymnastics facility was bumped in favor of other projects; Plocki was back to square one. "I still think that we would be absolutely nowhere, back in the Sports Coliseum," she says, "if it hadn't been for Donald Shepherd stepping up and saying, 'This is important to me. I want it done, and I'm going to pay for it.'"

Shepherd, a Michigan business school alum who retired as CEO of a successful money management firm, first met Plocki at an athletic department development dinner in the mid-1990s. Their early conversations were casual and cordial, consisting mostly of small talk. In the summer of 1998, the pair met for lunch-and what both agree was a deliciously sinful ice cream dessert-near Shepherd's home in Southern California. Unbeknownst to Plocki, Shepherd was planning to endow another scholarship, and women's gymnastics was on his list of considerations.

At the time, Shepherd endowed five athletic scholarships at Michigan-softball, tennis, field hockey, golf and volleyball. He also investigates each program before he makes a commitment. "My support is based a lot upon the people who are on the teams and my assessment of them as individuals," he says. "[Women's] gymnastics has good students who I enjoy watching."

Shepherd Center Training RoomIt didn't take long for Shepherd to be sold on the program. "We talked a lot about what her ideals were," he said. "I put a lot of weight and emphasis on what I think the coach's values are. I just had a really good feeling that she likes the athletes and is working on their behalf, and not using them to accomplish something for herself."

Shepherd actually endowed the first football scholarship on campus, but has since shied away from revenue sports, frustrated with the lack of personal contact.

A few days after Plocki returned from her visit with Shepherd, she received an e-mail stating, "Congratulations, Don Shepherd has chosen women's gymnastics as one of his next endowed scholarships." Astonished and flattered, Plocki over-nighted a thank-you package to Shepherd, including an autographed poster (which still hangs on his wall at home), some Michigan gymnastics apparel (which he proudly wears) and a card signed by all the team members, inviting Shepherd to accompany the team to NCAA championships (he attends every year). The next day, Shepherd called Plocki and accepted the invitation.

Shepherd had a blast on the trip. "Just the fact that I was included in virtually everything they did made a difference," he says. "If they just treated me as 'this guy over there,' there wouldn't be a new facility."

Shepherd CenterShepherd attended the competition with Katy Nellans, who was injured at the time. Nellans explained the sport's intricacies to Shepherd, who was eager to learn. "I still don't know how the judges really score," he admits. "I don't know what to look for or the names of the moves."

Following the NCAA banquet, the entire team visited Utah's training facility. Shepherd was in awe of its natural light and space, but was struck the most by the Wolverines' reactions. "They had come in with banquet clothes on, all dressed up, but they immediately made a beeline for the trampolines," he recalls. "I just remember how excited they were, ... "I immediately saw it and thought, Michigan needs one of these."

Shepherd waited until that evening to break the news. Seated at a table in Marie Callender's restaurant with Plocki and her husband, Shepherd leaned over his cup of coffee and said he'd put up one million dollars toward the cost of a new facility. "My jaw just dropped on the table," Plocki says. "What do you say to someone who offers to give you one million dollars? Tears started welling up in my eyes and Don kept saying, 'Don't you cry. If you start crying I'm going to cry.'"

Three years after that fateful dinner, the team moved into the Donald R. Shepherd gymnastics training center. (The men's team moved into the Coliseum, which was renovated.) The gym boasts 17,000 square feet of gym space, with 6,000 square feet of offices, locker rooms, a team lounge and a state-of-the-art training room. The biggest contrast to the old gym is the amount of natural light that pours through huge windows on two sides of the building. "At my home I have 12 skylights," Shepherd says. "I function better in a bright environment, so I wanted natural light coming in."

Shepherd CenterThe interior of the gym is unique in terms of safety and functionality. At every event, gymnasts can land on three different kinds of surfaces: competition, resi-pit and free-foam pit. The floor exercise area includes a full floor with the option of tumbling onto resi-pits, as well as a tumbling strip, rod floor, and in-ground tumble-trak. All lead to both resi- and free-foam pits. Three vault runways are atop a basketball-style floor, not concrete, to ease stress on the body.

The total price tag, funded by Shepherd, was $3.5 million. "The whole focus of this new training facility is not only to increase skills," Plocki explains, "but to reduce the amount of overuse injuries that are so prevalent in gymnastics. We're hoping that by having a variety of surfaces to land in and take off from, that this will help."

Along with injury prevention, the gym has aided in the comeback efforts of sophomores Lauren Mirkovich and Erica Rubin. Both underwent ACL repairs last winter and are training competitive dismounts, vaults and tumbling passes into the free-foam pits.

Having pits has also changed the team's training plan. "We've purposely held off on requiring the athletes to land on the real floor because we're pushing for upgrades," assistant coach Joanne Bowers says. "A lot of them are really close to having something ready."

Plocki always felt that Michigan had everything to offer except a quality facility, which put her at a disadvantage recruiting-wise. Now she can finally offer the complete package. "Recruits walk into the gym and can't believe such a place exists," she says.

Donald ShepherdAfter coming within tenths of national titles in 1995, 1999 and 2001, Plocki is appreciative of Shepherd's belief that there's more to success than a competition result. "Sometimes the nice guy doesn't always seem to finish first, and it does get frustrating when you feel like you're trying to do things the right way and you don't come out the way you think they should," she says. "But there are people out there like Don Shepherd who will recognize that and appreciate it. He made this dream come true for me."

Michigan junior Jessica Steyers, a former gymnast, is the women's gymnastics team student manager.

Reprinted with permission from International Gymnast Magazine Online.

 

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