The Lakewood girls’ gymnastics team is lucky to have coach Tom Glunt! Coach Glunt brings amazing energy to the team at every practice and meet, greeting everyone with a smile as soon as they walk in.
“Not only is he a great coach, but he also gives off such positive energy and is welcoming and encouraging“, said senior team member Ella Hyatt.
Glunt has been coaching gymnastics in general for 52 years, and at Lakewood for 9 years. His assistant coach is Emily Pearlman, who did gymnastics all 4 years at Lakewood and 8 years for a club team. This is now her fourth year helping out alongside Glunt.
Glunt’s favorite part of coaching gymnastics is seeing the girls grow and mature through their learning. With an increase in the number of girls on the team this year, he works hard to prepare every girl, old and new for the upcoming competition season. With the first meet coming up on December 20th, the team has been busy practicing new skills and learning routines with the help of Glunt and Pearlman.
A fun new addition to practices (introduced by Glunt) is to dance at the end of practice. Each time, a new person is chosen to play a song for the girls and everyone has to get out on the floor and dance together.
Glunt said he started the dancing to practice because he was “trying to bring more gymnastics to the kids involved.” The team has a variety of skill levels on our team, so dancing sets the stage for a positive environment and atmosphere for everyone around to come together. Over time, it has definitely become a favorite part of practice.
Although the season is now going smoothly, there was an unexpected setback for Glunt in last year’s gymnastics season. On the evening of January 8th, 2024, Glunt suffered from a stroke. The stroke somewhat paralyzed his right side. Glunt had to relearn how to walk, talk, and use his hands, (he still can’t do the griddy though). This meant that he was out for the rest of the season so he could adjust and get back to better health.
After Glunt’s stroke, assistant Coach Pearlman took over as head coach until Glunt recovered. This was only Pearlman’s third year as his assistant, so she had to become accustomed to the new role quickly.
“It was a lot of work getting used to all of the responsibilities he takes on that nobody really sees in the background,” Pearlman said.
Whether it was for spotting the girls, preparing for practices, or getting the gym ready for meets and judges, Glunt played a huge role and at first it was hard to adjust to this.
“I had to be on call a lot more for gymnasts and other coaches and the athletic director, and I wasn’t quite used to that. Also having the responsibility of running the whole practice, whereas I normally would have someone kind of telling you what we were doing that practice,” Pearlman said.
Behind the scenes, Glunt does a lot of work that we really started to appreciate more after he was gone. Although the right side of Coach Glunt’s body was paralyzed, he was determined to get better for the team.
“I had several motivations, okay, first of all, taking part of it is just being at meets and all the people who sent me cards, signed a poster, being able to say, thank you”, Glunt said.
Glunt had support from not only Lakewood but also the gymnastics community of coaches and teams. The team sent him get-well-soon cards and brought a poster to the last meet for everyone there to sign. At Districts, the most recent meet, Glunt won the Coach of the Year award and Pearlman won the Assistant Coach of the Year award.
With support from everyone and with helping the team as his motivation, Glunt is now back to the team! Although he still struggles at times with intonation, and spotting certain tricks on bars, he has experienced a major improvement. He had struggles with saying the “r” in sophomore on the team, Harper Kinder’s name, but practiced saying it over and over again in his room, and now he can say it clearly! His dedication to this group of girls and the team has been huge.
No matter what disadvantages Glunt faced, they have certainly never changed his attitude toward the thing he loves: coaching gymnastics. Even though he’s had unexpected obstacles thrown his way, Glunt continues to crack his same old jokes. He still blames Michigan for the reason for his stroke, since it occurred on the night that OSU lost. His lively energy and team optimism were missed by all of the team by the end of last year’s season, so we are happy to have him back in the 2024-2025 season.
