Finding The Perfect Balance

How It All Began

One day when I was six years old, my kindergarten teacher handed out some colorful flyers for the class to take home. They were sign up forms for after-school gymnastics lessons. My sister, a fourth grader, came home with the same form and begged my mom to let her sign up. My mom agreed and asked if I wanted to take lessons, too. I wasn’t really sure what gymnastics was, but it sounded kind of fun; and I wanted to do anything my sister did.

I was shy and nervous the first day I walked into the cafeteria and saw a bunch of little girls in leotards lined up on mats. I timidly walked over to join them, sat down, and the lesson began. It didn’t take long for me to discover how much fun gymnastics would be. We stretched into neat positions, and started learning new tricks. We arched up into a back bend and the world was suddenly upside-down. We did forward rolls and backward rolls, we stood on our hands, and we attempted cartwheels. Without too much effort I was able to do most of those things. What an amazing feeling it was to be able to do something I had no idea I could do. Some of the other children were having more difficulty with the skills than I was. When the coach would walk by and see me doing a trick correctly I would be praised. It was such a proud and unusual thing to feel like I was good at something. As a little kid I didn’t worry about things like that.

When our first meet came at the end of the six-week class, I won almost all first place ribbons. Because I did so well, I was one of the few gymnasts from my school chosen to go to the district meet. This was a big meet where the top gymnasts from each elementary school in the district got together to compete. I did really good and I even came home with some ribbons. After that I anxiously signed up for the next set of lessons.

After this six-week session I was selected once again to go to the district meet. I had a great meet and won even more ribbons. At the end of the meet a lady came up to me and my mom and suggested that I start working out with the school district team. This was the first time I realized that I may actually have a talent for gymnastics. This woman thought I was good enough to take lessons at a real gym, and I had been winning a lot of awards. Some of the other gymnasts seemed to struggle more than I did. I was picking up skills quickly, but they were having trouble with them. Maybe someday I could be a real gymnast.

Even in the first year or so of the sport, there were certain moments that, although subtly, gave me a hint as to what the world of gymnastics would really be about. I remember so clearly one evening doing a back bend and then trying to kick over so that I would land standing up. My mom was there watching me, offering suggestions, and spotting me once in a while. Over and over and over again I tried to kick over. My feet would leave the ground, I would get partway up, and then I would fall back down again. For at least an hour I struggled with that move. Trying one suggestion after another. Putting more effort into it. And trying it as many times as I could. Finally I made one. What an incredibly proud moment that was. And what a neat feeling, to accomplish something I had worked so hard for. I had to do it again. I tried and tried, and eventually I made another one. Then another one. After one more I was satisfied that I could really do the trick and took a break for the night.

What I should have learned in that seemingly insignificant evening was how much hard work gymnastics would take. Determination and not giving up were lessons I was already beginning to learn. I look back now and realize that these were qualities I must have already had, but that gymnastics made them more apparent and much stronger. I wanted that kick over, and I wasn’t going to quit until I did it. I also learned how much pride gymnastics could bring and how wonderful the feeling of accomplishment could be. The final thing I should have learned from this, but didn’t realize until just recently, was that my mom would always be my biggest supporter. For the rest of my gymnastics career she would be there for me for anything. She would listen to any problems was having at the gym, offer suggestions, and be happy for me when I achieved things. And for most of my accomplishments she was right there watching.

Another thing I discovered early on was that gymnastics could be scary at times. Once I started taking classes at a real gym, they had a set of uneven parallel bars. I had never worked on them before. The coach was teaching the class a dismount. Our feet were on the low bar, we were standing up holding onto the high bar, and we were supposed to let go of the high bar, put our hands between our feet, and swing down and off the bar. I was afraid. Even though the coach was standing there, I was scared to let go of the high bar. What if my hands missed the low bar? What if I fell? This is when I discovered that gymnastics wasn’t always going to be just fun and games. Eventually, as I watched the other girls do it easily, I worked up enough courage and went for it. It was so much easier than I had expected it to be. And it was fun. It was such a thrill to swing around the bar with such speed and then float off. I couldn’t wait to do it again, and then again. What had I been afraid of?

Besides learning that gymnastics could be scary, there were other lessons here. For one, things that seem frightening aren’t always as bad as you think they will be. Later in my career, skills that used to be the scariest would turn out to be the most thrilling and some of my favorite moves to perform. Also, coaches can be trusted to keep you safe. As soon as I had gone for the dismount I knew my coach had a hold on me and wouldn’t drop me.

This is how it all began. Little did I know in those few months of taking after-school lessons, what a passion gymnastics would become for me. For the next seventeen years I wouldn’t miss more than two weeks of gymnastics practice at a time. What used to be a one hour class two days a week would become three and a half to four hour workouts six days a week. Gymnastics was soon to become the most important part of my life, the center of my universe, and my identity. From kindergarten, to high school, all the way through college, gymnastics was the main focus of my life. Beginning as a small child, throughout my teen years, and even early adulthood, gymnastics was the biggest part of who I was. I was a gymnast. That’s how I saw myself and that’s what I was the most proud of.

My career would take me up to the second highest level of the sport (Level 10), to national and even a few international competitions, and it would allow me to travel all over the country. And by the end of my career, I would still love it as much as I had when I started. From the first day I stepped into the makeshift gym in the school cafeteria, I had no idea all the good times, the accomplishments, and the pride gymnastics had in store for me, and all the places gymnastics would take me. I also didn’t realize all the heartache, disappointments, tears, and pain that gymnastics would cause me. By the end, had it all been worth it? Absolutely. But that answer wasn’t always so clear-cut.

Relationships with Teammates

One of the special things about gymnastics is the relationships that are formed. The bond between teammates is irreplaceable and something I feel very lucky to have experienced. In fact, my closest friendships have all been with my teammates. Gymnastics also gave me the opportunity to experience a wide variety of relationships, because each relationship I had with any teammate or any coach was completely different. One thing gymnastics has done for me is taught me how to get along with all different kinds of people and how to work together.

There is a certain bond between gymnasts. Every gymnast is connected in some way because of their common interest and dedication to the sport. This allows each gymnast to at least be able to relate to every other gymnast on her team. There isn’t one gymnast throughout my entire career that I couldn’t at least get along with, no matter how different we were, because there was something in us that was essentially the same. We came to workout everyday and worked as hard as we could because we loved the sport. And this was true of any gymnast from any other team, too. I could carry on a conversation with someone from another team whom I’d never met before just because I knew we both had at least a few things in common. Every gymnast had sacrificed a great deal to do a tough sport and yet for some reason they continued to love it. This is the universal thing that brings gymnasts together and forms that connection, no matter what team or even what country you’re from. There are, of course, several other things that gymnasts have in common. Practically every gymnast goes through the same situations and has the same problems at some time in her career. All gymnasts have similar experiences and nearly identical lifestyles. At one time or another all gymnasts have problems with their coaches or their teammates. And each gymnast knows what it’s like to have a bad meet or a difficult workout. These, and countless other similarities between gymnasts, are what unite them in an almost universal sisterhood.

The connection between teammates is even stronger. Teammates work out with each other every day. They spend several hours per day, practically every day of the week, working and struggling together. In this time they can’t help but get to know each other, their strengths and weaknesses, and the best and worst parts of their personalities. They begin to know their teammates’ routines almost as well as they know their own. They watch each other as they struggle with skills and admire them for the skills they do well. They are proud of their teammates when they accomplish something they’ve been working hard for and hurt for them when they are disappointed in themselves. A gymnast can feel this entire range of emotions for a teammate even if she’s not her closest friend. It’s almost impossible not to feel these things because they’ve become almost like family. And like a family, gymnasts learn to work together and accept each other for what they are. They may get along with some members better than others, but they are all still a part of the family and must work together and support each other for the common good. If someone is down it is up to the others to pick her up and get her back on track.

Teammates have many other things in common, also. They have the same workout conditions to deal with. They can complain about the coaches, other teammates, the assignments, or any other element of the club they have in common. Maybe there are certain pieces of equipment none of the gymnasts like, maybe there are certain parents they don’t get along with, or maybe, like in my club, there’s no heating or air conditioning so the temperature can be complained about. There is no limit to the kinds of things that teammates can find they have in common. Even more important, teammates have a very similar lifestyle. They share all the same problems that come with being a gymnast. Every gymnast has to deal with frustration and injuries and all the other problems that happen in the gym, but they also have their outside lives to deal with, which can be nearly identical. They all have the problems of juggling a tough schedule between workouts and homework, having a limited social life, and leaving enough time for family obligations.

Teammates also get to learn more personal things about each other. Spending so much time together it’s impossible not to talk about school, homework, boyfriends, dances, parents, vacations, and anything else that is going on in each others’ lives. This is where I really got to know my teammates and where friendships were formed. At the very least I got to see a little bit of the person behind the hard working gymnast, her likes and dislikes and the things that were important to her. This is how I came to respect, if nothing else, the people I worked out with. I wasn’t always best friends with my teammates, but at least I could see where they were coming from and who they really were.

As teammates gymnasts learn how to come together as a team to reach common goals, but just as important is learning how to help each other on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s helping someone with a skill she’s having trouble with, other times it’s just telling them to keep up the good work. An important part of being a teammate is cheering someone up when she’s feeling down or listening to her problems. After all the years I’ve spent in gymnastics I’ve learned that how talented someone was or how high she scored wasn’t nearly as important as how good a teammate she was. At certain points throughout my career this was all I had to offer my team. I wasn’t the highest scorer and sometimes my scores didn’t count toward the team at all. This was very frustrating when I would have given anything to be more useful to my team. But someone had told me once that my contribution could be to simply be the best and most supportive teammate possible. Even if I couldn’t help score-wise all the time, being a great teammate was just as important. In college I came to realize just how true this was. I tried to become a team player and be helpful in whatever way I could, even if I was just playing a supporting role. It came to be very rewarding when some of my teammates would tell me that I had really helped them and that they appreciated all my support, but the true reward was how I felt about myself. I felt so much better knowing that I was helping so many of my teammates when they really needed it, rather than being frustrated that I wasn’t contributing as many of my scores to the team as I wanted to.

Looking back now I realize how important it is to be a good teammate because the teammates I remember the most and the ones that were the most special are those that went out of their way to be the best teammates they could be. There were a few, throughout different parts of my career, that were there for me no matter what. I knew I could always go to them if I needed help in any way. More important than how talented they were, was how willing they were to help out someone else.

I can’t say I was close friends with all my teammates, but in club especially we all felt like family and knew how to work together. By my senior year we had all known each other for so long that we knew what to expect from each other. We knew each person’s strengths and the best way to motivate each member of our team. Our team was very supportive and closely bonded. Of course we depended heavily on our coaches, Jay and Peggy, who were like the parents in this little family, but we were also strong without them. We knew how to get things done on our own. We could work together as a team, independent of our coaches, and get something great accomplished that would make them proud. In all my years of gymnastics, the team I was on during my senior year in high school is the team I was the most proud to be a part of.

In college, finding out how to be a team was much more difficult. Every year the team changed, seniors graduated and a batch of new freshmen arrived. So each year we had to get to know a new group of people, figure out their strengths and weaknesses, and learn who they were inside. Coming in as a freshman I was surrounded by an entirely brand new team and, just as I was really getting to know them, the seniors were leaving and a new group of freshmen were coming in. By the time I was a senior, the only people I felt really close to, besides my best friend, were the two people who had been freshmen with me. We had spent the four years together and now I was finally feeling like we had come a long way together, almost the same way I felt about my teammates in club. There is just no substitute for spending a lot of time and a lot of years together. Usually it requires several years to build a firm foundation where gymnasts can really feel that kind of connection.

But college teammates can become extremely close, too. Everyone is basically the same age and they are all going through most of the same experiences. They are away from home, adjusting to college life, and are trying to deal with the extreme demands of college classes. Several of my teammates took classes together, many even lived together. This created a bond between them that extended beyond the gym. In this way, college teammates can actually become even closer than club teammates.

Although there were several people on my college team that I didn’t feel close to at all and I knew we would never have been friends outside of the gym, there was still a common bond between us. Throughout all my years of gymnastics I worked hard to get along with everybody. I tried to remain neutral in any team argument. If there was one teammate that nobody liked, I would try to be friends with her anyway. Whether I liked a person or not I would do my best to be friendly, helpful, and supportive. I wanted my teammates to trust me and feel they could tell me something and know that I wouldn’t say anything behind their backs. For a few years during college I enjoyed being the one person on the team I knew everybody could get along with. I may not have been best friends with everyone, but there wasn’t one person I couldn’t be nice to or have a friendly conversation with.

There was one meet in particular, Nationals my sophomore year, where everybody was fighting with everybody. The team was completely divided, but even people on the same sides of an argument were complaining about each other behind their backs. But I was the one person who refused to get involved. I didn’t choose sides. As a result everyone felt comfortable coming to me and complaining. I would listen to them and tell them, Yes, I see why that would bother you. You’re right, that would probably upset me too. I said this to everybody. But I never repeated to anyone what had been told to me. By the end of the meet a few people had complimented me on staying neutral and for getting along with everybody.

Also during that meet I became friends with Kelly, the one person that everyone else hated. They were all ignoring her or insulting her, and I felt bad that they were treating her that rudely, so I decided to try to get to know her. We spent an hour or so talking and I came to realize that she wasn’t as bad as they all had made her out to be. I could understand some of the things that the rest of the team didn’t like about her, but she seemed nice enough to me. Kelly and I became friends that night and remained friends for quite a while.

The best friendships for gymnasts often occur between teammates rather than classmates at school. I believe the reason for this is that gymnasts have more in common with teammates that they do with classmates. They have all the same problems such as tough workouts, demanding coaches, and hectic schedules that people at school just can’t understand. Unless there are classmates that have an activity that takes up the same kind of time and dedication as gymnastics, they just don’t appreciate the commitment gymnasts have made to it. Often classmates can’t understand how gymnasts could give up so much spare time and social life to a sport. This lack of understanding makes close friendships difficult. Even my closest friend at school, Janet, just couldn’t quite get how important gymnastics was to me and this always kept a distance between us. We were friends when we were at school, but my life and my best friends were at gym and I don’t think she ever realized that. It was hard to be close friends with someone who didn’t truly understand the most important part of my life.

Also, because gymnastics takes up so much time, it doesn’t leave a lot of time to get together with school friends. If they can’t spend quality time with each other, there cant be much of a friendship. Teammates, on the other hand, spend most of their time together. They work out for hours, travel, share hotel rooms, go on gym related activities such as fund raisers and picnics, and do any number of things in between. There were times when we had been traveling for a week, and by the end of that week we had done so much together that we were all sick of each other. We were griping at each other like feuding siblings. At the time it was horribly frustrating but, nevertheless, it made us closer when we came back to workout a couple of days later.

For as long as I’ve been in the sport my best friends have all been fellow gymnasts. When I was still a lower level gymnast, one of my teammates, Martha, and I were best friends. Of course we spent hours at workout together, but it was the time outside of the gym that was important. We would spend hours talking about the coaches, which boys at the gym we had a crush on, and what skills we wanted to learn. We spent a lot of time dreaming about being an upper level gymnast. But eventually gymnastics caused our friendship to end. An unforeseen problem with gymnastics friendships is when one friend moves up to a higher level and the other one doesn’t. This is what happened to our friendship. Martha moved up, and I stayed behind. We tried to remain best friends but we grew apart. We no longer worked out together, I was in the afternoons and she was in the evenings, so we didn’t have that time to spend with each other anymore. And when we did get together outside of the gym, it was different. Now that Martha was an upper level she had a new style of workout, new friends, and new skills. It was an exciting time for her. I had hoped to move up that year too but I didn’t. I was somewhat jealous that she had all these things that I had wanted too, but the jealousy isn’t what got in the way. It was the fact that she knew I couldn’t really relate to her new life. As much as I wished I could be a part of what she was going through, I just couldn’t. I was an outsider and she knew it. We grew apart quickly and it hurt, but I knew it wasn’t her fault. Martha wasn’t abandoning me, we just no longer had everything in common the way we used to.

Two years later I experienced the other side of this when I moved up and left a different best friend, Monica, behind. I didn’t mean to let our friendship slip away, but I came to fully understand just how hard it is to remain friends with someone when your life completely changes and hers doesn’t, especially when your workout time together is taken away. I’m sure she felt like I had let her down, and I’ve always felt bad about that. I just didn’t know how to make our friendship work when our lives were suddenly so different.

During my last few years at club I had another best friend, Heidi. We were both Level 10 but she was much more talented than I was. She was one of our highest scorers and went to Nationals every year. Before we became friends I didn’t think we would have anything in common, but then we got to know each other. Our outside lives were so similar that we couldn’t help but become friends. We both worked very hard at school and got excellent grades. We were also the only people on our team who weren’t interested in having a social life. While the rest of our team was busy worrying about dances and boyfriends and parties, we had more important things on our minds, or at least they seemed more important to us, like homework and family. Sometimes we would make fun of the others for being so worried about being socially accepted at school. One thing Heidi and I enjoyed doing together was talking about the coach’s favorites. We would privately complain about it, or sometimes we would only have to share a look that said something like, Look who’s getting special attention again. The fact that we felt so alike while everyone else seemed different was what made our relationship even stronger. When we both went to different colleges, the friendship unfortunately ended. We tried to keep in touch for a while, but inevitably we drifted apart.

Somewhere in the middle of my freshman year in college I found a new best friend. Brianna and I were a part of a group that were considered non-favorites of the coaches. A few of us were always put in the same group to workout everyday, and then we would get practically no coaching. So we all decided to become our own little support group. We would coach each other and help each other out in any way we could. This is how Brianna and I got to know each other a little bit, but we actually became friends in one day. We were assigned by the coach to work on a fund raiser together. We spent an entire day working on the project and, by the end of the day, we were good friends.

In the gym I came to think of Brianna as an older sister. Brianna was always there to help me when I was having trouble. She would cheer me up if I was down and she would help give me confidence. We both knew that I would sometimes let fear get in the way of skills I knew I could do. Even if I had been doing a skill for years or it was just a skill I shouldn’t be afraid of, I would let my fear get the best of me and I wouldn’t go for it. So one day I told Brianna to just tell me that I was being stupid, that I could do this skill, and to just do it. That’s exactly what she told me and that’s exactly what I did. Of course as soon as I went for it I realized how silly I had been to be afraid of it. So from that day on I gave her my permission to come right out and tell me that I was being stupid if she ever saw me being afraid of something we both knew I could do. And she did. Sometimes I didn’t want to hear it, but she was almost always right. And it usually helped. Sometimes I just needed a little extra incentive to get over my fear.

Brianna retired from gymnastics a few years before I did. After she graduated from college she moved away and, although we kept in touch occasionally, we drifted apart for awhile. We lived several hours from each other and we didn’t always have time to call one another. I still had school to finish and she was moving on with her life. However, about a year after I graduated, we reconnected. We were both going through some hard times and came to realize just how much we suddenly had in common. Our friendship became stronger than ever as we supported each other through our problems. And we still keep in touch to this day.

During my last two years of gymnastics, Samantha and I became best friends. We had seen each other for several years before because our clubs often competed with each other, and during my junior year at college she showed up as a sophomore. We worked out for several months together, sometimes in the same group, but we didn’t become friends until competition season started. There was one meet in particular where all of our teammates had formed little friendship groups. Samantha and I seemed to be the only ones that were excluded. I don’t think it happened on purpose, but it just worked out that way. So we had no choice but to sit together for lunch one day. As we talked we found out that we had quite a bit in common. Our families were so similar and the way we felt about a lot of things were the same. Unlike the rest of our teammates, neither one of us was interested in partying and picking up guys at frat parties. Samantha had a serious boyfriend and was making plans for the future with him. And I had never been into partying and flirting to the extreme that the rest of our teammates had. We were both a little more serious than the rest and more focused on the future. This came to be the biggest element of our friendship, that we were exactly alike in so many ways and that the rest of our team was so different from us that we couldn’t always relate to them. By my senior year we both felt like we had so little in common with the rest of our teammates that we were grateful to have each other.

The majority of the time we spent together was at the gym and traveling for meets. Since Samantha spent a lot of her time with her boyfriend (who soon became her husband), and I spent most of my time studying, we didn’t often have a chance to spend much time together outside of the gym. But anytime we did get together we spent a lot of our time talking about the things at the gym that bothered us, like the favoritism, the coaching, and the teammates we didn’t get along with. But we were friends not only because we had things in common, but because we were there for each other through a lot of hard times. We supported each other through anything. Since I was retiring before she was, she was there for me when I needed to talk about how afraid I was of leaving the sport. Samantha was the only one I could really talk to about it. She was also there for me when I was frustrated about not competing as much as I wished I could be. There are countless other things that she helped me through and I know that I’ve been there for her just as much.

Jealousy and Rivalries

A common problem that can occur between teammates is jealousy. Gymnasts can be jealous of each other for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s simply because someone is more talented than she is. Or it could be that she is getting more attention from the coaches. The most common types of jealousy are the little things, such as someone learning a skill first or getting to work a skill that someone else wanted to do. These kinds of jealousy occur everyday and are so common that they often don’t become a major problem. A gymnast may complain about them to a close teammate or to her parents, but she learns to deal with it and move on.

An important thing that gymnastics teaches is how to deal with jealousy. Usually a gymnast is jealous of someone else’s talent level or skills, not the person herself. It’s sometimes difficult to accept the fact that the person is more gifted than she is. I spent a lot of my career wondering why other people were more talented than I was. It wasn’t because they loved the sport more or because they worked harder than I did. I could never figure out why some people were more talented than others but the only conclusion I could come up with was that it just wasn’t fair. But worrying about what’s fair or not and spending energy being jealous is just a waste of time. Sitting there feeling jealous isn’t going to change the situation. But working hard might. If a gymnast can look back and realize that she’s been working as hard as she can, then she has nothing to be jealous of. She should be extremely proud. She may not be the most talented person in the world, but she continued to work hard and not give up. And she should try to take a look at how far she’s come. If she is able to at least be keeping up with whoever she’s jealous of, then she can’t be doing that bad.

Over all the years of gymnastics, there are only two times that stand out in my mind