Welcome to a very special episode of GymCastic is the week of championships and I've been wanting to do this episode for so long because I want the athletes and parents and anyone taking care of athletes to know what their rights are and what some of the problems might be with the USA Gymnastics national team agreement, which thank you to USA Gymnastics credit where credit is due is now online it's not the current one but it's the one from last year because there have been a lot of complaints from athletes

over the years about the national team agreement and a lot of concerns and so we finally have an agreement that's current ish that we can talk about and give you guys some guidelines on what is okay what's not okay and what to get a lawyer's advice about and some of the red flags about this so or what you might want clarification on welcome back to the show Jamie Santos is a partner at Goodwin and we have Betsy Cooper back at the on the show again she is the founding director of the tech hub at the

Aspen Institute both attorneys welcome back to both of you think you you so much for being here so looking at these agreements what were your first kind of thoughts and concerns Jamie I'll start with you so I would say kind of at a big picture level when I if I'm a you know a parent looking at this agreement I think I need to know that this is this is not a pro individual athlete agreement it is an agreement that was drafted by lawyers for an organization that's drafted in the organization's best interest

and I don't mean that in a kind of critical way I mean it's actually the lawyers job to act in the best interest of USA gymnastics and it's in USA gymnastics interest to act in the best interests or to kind of act for all gymnasts in the United States so you'll notice all at least I noticed a number of things in the agreement that seem to give USA gymnastics the opportunity to kind of maximize sponsorships and maximize revenue coming into the organization rather than maximize the organization

and maximize money going to particular national team athletes but I actually think that's kind of reasonable because the more money USAG can bring in the more it can provide support to clubs the more it can help you know up and coming to miss who aren't on the national team the more it can create programming that will educate club owners and parents so I don't think it's an unreasonable approach to kind of do what's you know best for USAG but it's something that parents who are individually negotiating with you USAG should know that.

Now when they go into this.

That's who would you think so if I were parent engaging in like reading this for my child I don't think that I would let my child sign this version of the agreement.

There's a lot of vagueness in some of the frasings about how your likeness can be used

and who can provide medical care, what types of waivers come in.

That's actually quite clear, it's quite strong.

But so as a parent, I would want more specificity in places, I would want more flexibility,

and I would want more reciprocity so that if I have obligations, USAG has obligations.

So my number one piece of advice would be get a lawyer and talk to them about your specific situation.

In general, though, there's enough vagueness here that I would want to build in more specificity before signing.

And I think that a lot of people think you get this, they get this the night of when they make

national team and the next morning they have a breakfast for a national team and they feel like

they have to sign it right then.

So it's important to know you do not have to sign it right that second, don't let anyone

pressure you into that, get advice or think about it, read it all through, don't be pressured

to sign it right away.

So let's talk about my favorite part of this new national team agreement because I have

seen past national team agreements.

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