Amy Scherer joins us for her fourth appearance on the pod to discuss her work covering the US Olympic Gymnastics trials, and the accessibility challenges she's faced both at the events themselves and while traveling for them.



Check out Amy's coverage at: https://www.intlgymnast.com/



Full transcript available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-july24/

Stephanie Flynt:

Do I just start?

Jack Rosen:

Yeah.

Stephanie Flynt:

Yeah. Well, we've got to be up. Hold on, well. Aghhhhhhh. I almost fell over Nala.

*Intro Music Plays*

Jack Rosen:

All right. Well, our podcast team has been decimated by meetings and migraines and everything else. So it's just me and Raquel here to kick us off today. Guess what, Michelle? I'm doing the intro this time. So I guess I am a host. Raquel, do you want to tell the folks who we have on today?

Raquel Rosa:

Thanks, Jack. Today we are going to be joined by Amy Scherer, one of NDRN's dynamite attorneys. She focuses on supporting the CAP program, or the client assistance program. She's going to be talking to us today about a recent trip she took to Minneapolis where she was fortunate enough to see the gymnastics Olympic trials. Take it away, Amy.

Amy Scherer:

Wow. Raquel, thanks for such a kind introduction and I'm really glad to be on here today to talk a little bit about my experience. As Raquel said, my day job is as a staff attorney at NDRN, focusing on CAP, or client assistance program, VR related employment issues.

And I just happen to have a little side job that is also quite fun and I feel lucky to be able to do it. Maybe something that not everybody gets to do every day, but I essentially work as a freelance writer for International Gymnast Media. It used to be International Gymnastics Magazine, but as many things have happened over the last couple of years through the pandemic and everything, it's now essentially a website, but it is the main media that covers international gymnastics, and it's been around since 1956. So it's really great to be able to be a part of that organization.

And the gentleman that runs the website and was a publisher of the magazine, I actually had a chance to meet him when I was 10 years old and just started getting involved in the sport and really fell in love with the 1984 Olympics when Mary Lou Retton won for the United States and also the men's team for the US won the gold medal there. So that was sort of my introduction to the sport, and I was able to meet Paul Ziert, the publisher, and that's where our relationship began, which led to my ability to work there many years later. I never thought as a child that literally 40 years later I'd be working for that organization, but it all worked out that way.

And the job, it's interesting because I don't think it's that common even in 2024 for members of the press to be wheelchair users or to have visible physical disabilities. So my primary job with International Gymnast is to cover the NCAA season, which is separate than the Olympic season. These are individuals obviously who are in college, have scholarships, and there's an entire NCAA season just like there would be for football or basketball. And I typically write a column during the season each week and then get a chance to go to attend the NCAA national championship at the end of the year. So that's a live event, and involves going to the competition and writing about it while it's happening, so similar to live chat, and then also going to press conferences after that.

So when I first started doing this, which was probably back in 2016 when I started to do the formal coverage of NCAA, they didn't even have a place for a person in wheelchair to sit in the press section. There were actually five steps up there to even g...