From Division I to the World Stage: One Athlete’s Journey to the 2012 Olympics

By: Delanie Howell

Every four years people stop their lives to watch the best athletes in the world compete in the Olympics. But what if during the time between Olympic competitions, you walked by one every day and had no idea? Alex Naddour is one of those you might miss.

Being born to parents who both competed at the college level in the same sport is not something everyone can say. Naddour’s mother, Sandy, competed at Ohio State and his father, Mike, at Arizona State in gymnastics. Mike Naddour also owns USA Youth Fitness Center in Gilbert, Arizona and coaches the Arizona Flairs, a team Naddour would later join. With his father as his first coach, Naddour began to realize that he was a natural at the sport and said,  “I did try other sports, but gymnastics was the one that stuck.”

When Alex Naddour made the decision to attend the University of Oklahoma, he did so over such prestigious schools as Stanford, Cal-Berkeley and Penn State. He liked the tradition of excellence in the gymnastics program at OU, as well as the coaching staff. Naddour’s coach at OU, Mark Williams, is excited about the success of his athletes and looks forward to watching some of them in the Olympics; Naddour possibly being one of them. Williams said he wanted Naddour on his team because his “talent level stands out from some of the guys we looked at, [he] just [has] aspects that, um, drew me in as a coach and wanted to take [him] to the highest potential [he] had for the sport.” There are four OU students on Team USA, as well as the alternate. The team recently brought a bronze medal back to the states from the World Championships in Tokyo, Japan.

Naddour feels his chances of making the Olympic team are “pretty good. The World Team is made of six people; the Olympic team will be made of five. Most of the time, the Olympic team is the World team. Judging by that alone, if I wasn’t on the team, it would drop our team score two points.”

Those who are around Naddour often say that he is pretty laid-back about all of his success.  His roommate, Raymond White, commented on Naddour’s preparation for Tokyo, “It was kind of weird, you would think that living with someone preparing for something so big like that, things would be different with crazy packing and like going off to Wal-Mart to buy whatever you need. His attitude would change, but not really. None of that actually happened. It was pretty normal.”

Alex Naddour competing at a home meet in 2011.

PHOTO: Whitney Ewing

Naddour is grateful for the success he has achieved, but ask him about his car or his dog, and you’ll get much more out of him.