It isn’t unusual for the University of Utah’s women’s gymnastics program to bring awareness to causes or institutions that the team values.
Every year, the Red Rocks have a military appreciation night. There have been pride nights and breast cancer awareness nights over the years, and the list goes on.
Sometimes, the causes promoted by Utah gymnastics can fly a little under the radar, though.
The Red Rocks draw tens of thousands to the Huntsman Center regularly during the winter. Watching the perennial national title contenders compete is why people show up in such great numbers. Friday night, thousands will descend on the Huntsman Center yet again to watch No. 4 Utah take on Denver in the Red Rocks’ final regular-season conference meet this year.
One of those fans is the reason for Utah’s latest cause.
First-year team manager Maya Schroeder isn’t widely known by Utah fans. A student at the University of Utah, Schroeder is nonetheless an integral part of the Red Rocks' program.
As a team manager, she is at practices, attends competitions and she is responsible, along with a few others, for making sure mats, springboards and the like are in the right position when every gymnast competes.
That is just the beginning of a manager’s responsibilities too.
Team managers can be almost invisible to fans, but they are vitally important for the gymnasts. So it isn’t a surprise that Schroeder, a former Level 10 gymnast herself, has become a beloved figure in the Utah program.
And Schroeder’s father, Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf revealed earlier this week, is battling ALS.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
Per the ALS Association, “the progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their demise. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. When voluntary muscle action is progressively affected, people may lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe.”
For Schroeder’s father, that means he went from being a regular outdoorsman a decade and a half ago — he was a hiker, biker and skier, Dockendorf said — to being confined to a chair full-time.
The disease has progressed enough in the last 14 years since he was diagnosed that Schroeder’s father can no longer speak and has to communicate by blinking.
Blink-To-Speak involves a camera that tracks the eyes by “sending real-time video frames to computer vision modules for facial landmarks detection, eye identification and tracking”, per Nature.com.
And yet, Schroeder’s father still has attended multiple Utah gymnastics meets this season in support of Maya and will be in attendance tomorrow night.
The Red Rocks, the gymnasts themselves, approached the University of Utah about having an ALS awareness night this season as a way to recognize Maya, her dad, the entire Schroeder family.
“Our girls — our athletes — wanted to do something special for her and her family," Dockendorf said. “They approached us about making this an awareness meet for ALS. To just recognize, you know, someone who is really important to them.”
“These are amazing women,” she added.
More information about ALS can be found at ALS.org.