NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Li Li Leung repeats the question out loud, leans back, and then does something that’s been all too rare during her transformative tenure as the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics.
She stops.
“What have I learned?” Leung says again.
After a brief exchange to buy some time, she settles on an answer that, in typical Leung fashion, says a lot by saying only a little.
“I haven’t had time (to think about it),” Leung told The Associated Press. “And that’s the whole point, is like, I haven’t had time to digest everything that has happened over the past six years.”
One of the many reasons — and perhaps the main reason — it’s time to step away.
From the day Leung walked into the organization’s then dungeon-like Indianapolis office (it has since moved to one with far more natural light) in March 2019 at the height of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, through this weekend’s U.S. Championships, she has been in perpetual motion.
And while partial blame falls on Leung’s inherent work ethic, the reality is the former Michigan gymnast knew she didn’t really have a choice. One of the crown jewels of the U.S. Olympic movement was in tatters, fiscally — USA Gymnastics had all of six weeks of cash flow at the time Leung took over — and, far more pressingly, culturally.
Trust, both internally and externally, had eroded. Restoring it would take time. It would also take the kind of compassion that Leung’s immediate predecessors had been unable to muster.
Before Leung accepted the job, one of her mentors told her to avoid trying to “boil the ocean,” that trying to become everything to everyone was a fool’s errand.
It might have been the one bit of advice she received that she didn’t take.
“My response to him was, ‘Well, I’m going to boil as much of it as I can,’” Leung said.
Quiet compassion
And while the former NBA executive began the process of trying to keep the organization financially viable, Leung knew early on that the most important aspect of her mission was to restore faith among the organization’s hundreds of thousands of members, and just as vitally, the hundreds of women who were abused by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment.
While Leung was limited in what she could say publicly as the lengthy mediation process between USA Gymnastics and the survivors played out, she and USAG board chair Kathryn Carson made it a point to attend dozens of hearings, listening to the experiences of the women abused by Nassar and using quiet moments when the tape recorder was off to reconnect.
“(We) had the opportunity to express personally how much we cared about trying to do the right thing and heard their stories directly,” Carson said. “There were a lot of tears.”
And eventually, progress. While the record $380 million settlement offered a bit of closure, Leung understood it was merely one milepost in a process that she understands will never be over.
When Leung told the organization’s leadership group in early June that she was stepping down at the end of the year, her message wasn’t to reflect on how far the organization has come, but how far there still is to go.
“I was like ‘You guys got this,’” Leung said. “And they have it. I mean, I think I have instilled in them that we’re never done. There’s always more that can be done, always challenge ourselves to be better. We talk about it in our meetings all the time. ‘What else can we be doing better?’ And I think they understand that.”
Coming full circle
It’s one of the reasons why Leung is hesitant to reflect. Growing up in New Jersey, her parents instilled in Leung and her twin sister May May a humbleness that even now, after steering USA Gymnastics out of the darkness, she is reluctant to turn the spotlight on herself.
Leung would much rather deflect, pointing out that the work of the team she assembled is just as important as anything she has done.
It’s a trait that — along with her background in a sport that can be equal parts thrilling and unforgiving — helped her navigate those crucial early days when everything felt so tenuous.
“She did not allow herself to get rattled at times that any of the rest of us might have been,” Carson said. “The biggest thing that she did was exercise her passion for the sport by being just there in the community, everywhere, with every different type of person.”
And do it quietly. Of the many things Leung is, the one thing she is not is performative. When she came on, the list of people critical of the organization was long, loud, distinguished, and, well, justified in its frustration and anger.
While Leung had nothing to do with the systemic breakdowns that created a culture in which the balance of power tilted too far away from the athletes, she understood how important it was to let those most affected be heard and part of the solution.
Leung had been on the job five months when Olympic champion Simone Biles, herself a Nassar survivor, called out USA Gymnastics ahead of the 2019 U.S. Championships for its repeated inability to protect its athletes. Five years later, Biles credited the organization for “ putting in the work ” to make the changes necessary to restore trust.
Three decades ago, Dominique Moceanu became the youngest national champion in USA Gymnastics history. A year later, she was part of the “Magnificent Seven” that earned Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Moceanu also — long before Nassar’s crimes came to light — became an outspoken critic of coaches who were physically and emotionally abusive. She felt like a “pariah” and figured her relationship with USA Gymnastics was over.
Yet there she was on Sunday night, waving to the crowd inside the Smoothie King Center on the 30th anniversary of her triumph, a full-circle moment that wouldn’t have happened without Leung and the changes Moceanu — who now runs her eponymous gym with her husband Mike just outside Cleveland — sees in the sport at large.
“Li Li’s been a constant and a stable leader, which has been very good, and I think there are things that are shifting,” Moceanu said. “And that’s a sign that USAG is starting to heal as well, in a sense, from the wounds and the damage and everything that had happened.”
Moving forward
The healing process, however, is far from over. And Leung is acutely aware that all the progress that’s been made over the last six years can unravel quickly without constant vigilance.
“We want to make our environment as unwelcome a place as possible for predators,” she said. “And that’s kind of a philosophy that we use when we talk about how we try to mitigate (problems). How we try and have zero tolerance and create accountability.”
It’s telling of how far USA Gymnastics has come on just about every front that a job nobody wanted six years ago — not even Leung, initially — is suddenly remarkably more attractive. It helps that membership has risen to more than 240,000 athletes, coaches and gym owners during Leung’s watch. The corporate sponsors that fled after Nassar have returned. Just last week USA Gymnastics announced a partnership with NBC Sports that will run through the 2032 Olympics.
Leung is serving as an advisor in the search for her successor. While she thinks it would be “beneficial” if the next president was a gymnast, she strongly believes whoever it is must be a former athlete.
“(They need) someone who understands sports and understands high-pressure environments and high-pressure competition, in order for that person to be successful,” she said.
As for Leung, she says she wants a break. The last few months have been challenging in her personal life, reinforcing the need for her to step away and hit reset.
How long that might take, she’s not sure, pointing out that how she feels in early August might not be the way she feels on Dec. 31.
Leung has received numerous overtures from other entities in recent years as USA Gymnastics found itself on increasingly firmer footing. She said no to them all. She might say no to them some more before moving on to what’s next.
The one thing she will do, however, is listen. If Leung has learned anything over the last six-plus years, it’s that. Listening leads to growth, a personal philosophy that has also become one of USA Gymnastics’ guiding principles.
Yes, she could use the next three years in the run-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics as a victory lap. That’s simply not her way. Her goal when she arrived was to leave the gymnastics community at large in a better place than she found it. While she wouldn’t trade a second of the journey it’s taken to do just that, she’s also aware of the toll it has taken personally.
“The parallel or the analogy that I would draw to gymnastics is staying in competitive shape this entire time, with no rest,” she said. “That’s only sustainable for so long. So I’m going to finally get my rest.”
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