Gym-nasty? where?

There is a secret flying around Gill Coliseum lately that is flying right over this columnist’s head. Even though the gymnastics NCAA West Regional is being hosted this weekend, it’s not the athletes flying over my head – it’s the verbiage.

"Everyone on the team is a ‘gym-nasty,’" Brooke Barclay of the Oregon State gymnastics team said. "It’s a good thing."

"No," Teammate Claire Pierce said. "That’s too vague. You have it all wrong. It’s an adjective."

Oh, so someone is being gym-nasty, they aren’t a gym-nasty.

"No," Pierce said, "That’s wrong, too. C’mon, use your imagination."

Right. Imagination.

Instead, I looked in the dictionary, right there after gymnast. Synonyms: consistent, tough and intelligent. Antonyms: Isaiah Thomas as head coach of the Knicks, University of Oregon and that kid from "The Neverending Story." Imaginative enough?

Never heard of gym-nasty, you say? You aren’t alone. "Gym-nasty? We don’t know what it means," a group of students said. "But we like it."

So do the Beaver gymnasts. They have embraced the idea of being a gym-nasty and having gym-nasty qualities – whatever that means. The word has turned into a way of life and unified the team.

But it didn’t start here at Oregon State. The gymnasts say they have heard the word used elsewhere. Brooke Barclay heard it used in the Midwest.

"I was on a recruiting trip to Iowa when I first heard about it," Barclay said.

Interestingly, some members of the team don’t want to talk about the word. They play it off like the world doesn’t know. They are trying to keep everyone in the dark.

"I’m eating Qdoba," freshman Jereme Bigelow said. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

Laura-Ann Chong repeated Bigelow’s sentiments. "I’ve never heard of it," she said. "Sorry."

But they aren’t fooling me.

So maybe the gymnasts won’t open up around the dinner table, but what about when they aren’t eating Qdoba? When food is out of the equation, other teammates are a little more open to the idea of a gym-nasty discussion.

"Let me think," Kera Bolen said. "It means our moves are sick-wid-it, that we are crazy. But crazy in a good way."

Well, it’s not that easy, said Keegan Fitzgerald. Literally.

"It’s not that easy," she said.

So how do you know if you have met a gym-nasty or someone who has gym-nasty qualities? Follow this simple dichotomous key.

Does this person do handstands randomly? Check. In the past, have boys asked during a school dance if their calluses on their hands hurt? Check. Do they spend more time at the washing machine with spandex than normal clothes? Check. Have they made it to the cusp of a national championship habitually? Check.

Gym-nasty? Oregon State has a few – 16 to be exact.