The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1465168
MAY 2022 THE WOLVERINE 15 INSIDE MICHIGAN ATHLETICS Graduate student Alan Gerdov of the men's gymnastics team always wanted to blaze his own trail in his younger days. His sister, Nicole, was the first to wind up at Michigan. He was ready to push back against that, but the pull to Ann Arbor was too great to resist. "I'm not the proudest to say what I'm about to say, but when I was in high school, I had some ego attached," Ger- dov said. "I wanted to pave my path. And out of the schools that I talked to athleti- cally, Michigan recruited me the least. However, looking back on that I can say I have absolutely zero regrets and that was the best choice in my life, in following my sister's footsteps and paving my path differently." Gerdov, who was named Aca- demic All-Big Ten for winter sports on March 23, wanted to chart his own course. He ultimately did so in ways he might not have ever expected. He suffered a stress fracture in his back during his junior season of high school in Lincolnshire, Ill. When he returned as a senior, he shattered his nose. Ger- dov's back pain was as bad as it ever had been during his freshman year in col- lege, and he wound up being cut from the team. He returned to the program as an undergraduate assistant in 2019 and worked his way back for competi- tion in 2020. Unfortunately, the season was canceled after two meets due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Another injury knocked him out in 2021 before he was able to return to competition this past season. He set a personal best on the high bar at the Windy City Invitational with a 12.90 score. "That story kind of makes me who I am today, as I look back at the mistakes that I made, and make sure that I apply a better attitude to any adversity I've had," he said. "Whether it's physical adversity, in terms of being hurt or trying to make it back on the team, despite all these in- juries, if you don't have a good attitude, it's just going to negatively spiral not only for you but for your teammates as well. You want to be an energizer in the group, you don't want to be de-ener- gizing. "I just apply that — I try to have a good attitude and control the controllable and take one step at a time with any problem that I have, for all of my ob- stacles, from athletic to mental to emo- tional or anything." Gerdov sees his time at U-M as a bless- ing given that his career nearly came to a close his freshman year. "I had already come to terms with never doing gymnastics again," he said. "And I was disappointed with my academic performance. Because even though I didn't do poorly, I had this sense of arrogance, based on how I did so well in high school. And then I come to a university like Michigan, where ev- erybody's like that. I felt like I had lost some of my identity, and then to be able to turn that around and realize that I am more than just a student-athlete, I was able to just take whatever came my way and appreciate it." Gerdov may have had an attitude as a younger man, but the foun- dation for his mentality came from his family. He has used everything he has learned to be a leader and someone to lean on in the men's gymnastics program. "My family always stressed the impor- tance of attitude and handling your affairs aca- demically," he said. "They put a lot of stress on edu- cation. I understood that at the end of the day, that was the priority. That's why I went to the University of Michigan. You don't have to just strive in one field and compromise on the others. You could do well in both. I want to make sure that when people look back on their careers as student- athletes, they don't have any regrets. I think that's the priority. And that's kind of what I preach to the team." Gerdov comes from a family of Ukrai- nian immigrants and engineers, and he wears that badge proudly. He will start a job as a program manager at Microsoft on Aug. 1 but has one more competition left in him after the NCAA Champion- ships. He and teammate Adam Wooten will head to Israel on July 5 to compete in the Maccabiah Games, which run through July 27. Then, the next part of the journey takes place. "Even though my parents have noth- ing but love and support for me, and they would have accepted any pro- fession that I wanted, it was almost as if it was destiny to just join them in their footsteps and do electri- cal engineering," Gerdov said. "No regrets and I've enjoyed it a lot." — Anthony Broome Gerdov, who was named Academic All-Big Ten on March 23, is an electrical engineering major and will start his professional career at Microsoft this summer. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY Student-Athlete Of The Month Men's Gymnastics Graduate Student Alan Gerdov