He was never inappropriate with us, but he was a really flirty guy, and we all saw that. And sometimes the women he flirted with were very close to our age -- 18, 19 years old, and we were 15 or 16. There were a lot of things he did that made me feel weird -- he was a weird guy. The conditions of the sport are strange, and that was what I was trying to say. Most men that coach women gymnasts have never been gymnasts themselves. So I always wondered, even as a child: Why do these men want to coach little girls? In some instances, it's purely financial. But I think in the minority of cases, there are men who are interested in little girls.

That's not a typo: one kid, 45 scholarship offers.

Of course, that got my attention, but then the conversation went a different direction, and we started talking about the type of commitment that gets a kid to that level.

She told me she home-schools her daughter, because the regional and national travel, on top of daily practice, makes a normal school schedule impossible. She didn't say how much all this costs. But when I told her I'd heard from a friend that it costs $1,000 a month to compete at that level, she said it wasn't that high, but implied that it wasn't a whole lot less.

So just when I was thinking that a few years of travel and training would negate any financial benefit of a college scholarship, the conversation took another turn:

Her daughter came over, with one foot bandaged. They had a quick back-and-forth, and then the daughter ran off to continue training.

I asked what was wrong with her daughter's foot. She said, "Oh, they think it's a stress fracture. But they don't want her to go see a doctor."

Why not?

"A doctor'll just tell her to stay off it. And then she'll have to quit training. If you see a doctor, you have to do what he says."

If I read this correctly, she was talking about legal liability; the club has none, as long as the kids don't see an actual doctor for their injuries. As soon as they see a doctor, it's game over. At that point, ignoring the doctor's advice could set up the gymnastics center for a lawsuit.

I then said what anyone who knows me would expect me to say: "If any coach tried to tell me whether or not I could take my kid to a doctor, there would be trouble."

She smiled. "Then your kids couldn't do this."

The way he would probably present himself is that he aided you in getting back to your goal. It's easy to look back and say that as a doctor, he should have had my physical and mental health at heart, but he saw my best interests as getting me back into the gym so I could compete and win. I think that most orthopods and specialists who treat high-level athletes are probably very similar. If you talk to the doctor for the San Francisco 49ers, they probably send people into play who aren't 100 percent. What made the situation unique is that we were children.