During my junior year, I started writing a column in the sports section about gymnastics. Twenty-five editions later, this column has become one of my favorite things I have written for our paper. Now, I’m graduating, I’m retiring from college sports and I’m closing this chapter of writing for the Daily too.
I started this column for a few reasons. Fall of junior year, I completed an in-depth research project for a geographic information systems class, where I mapped the hometowns and training sites of every gymnast and coach who had been a part of the U.S. women’s national team since 1982. I spent hours digging through old newspaper articles, meet results and federation rosters. While I had always stayed involved with gymnastics by watching and reading about it, this research took me to a whole new level. I hadn’t done gymnastics in over a decade, but suddenly, I was back in it for hours every day — reading, watching, thinking. It reminded me how layered the sport is and how much there is to uncover in its history, its culture and its evolution.
I’ve always loved talking about gymnastics with my mom — she was a high-level gymnast in a different era and shares the same passion for the sport — and we talked at length about everything unexpected I learned during this research. And then, out of nowhere, Gabby Douglas — one of the first gymnasts I ever watched at the Olympics — announced a comeback, which completely blew my mind. With all of this, I decided to start writing about gymnastics.
After the spring of my junior year and the first few editions of the column, I spent the summer working at a pole vault camp in Maine. The camp’s training program was heavily influenced by gymnastics, with a strong focus on building fundamental strength and body awareness. While track and field training usually centers on weightlifting, this camp also emphasized calisthenic exercises, which made perfect sense given that, like gymnastics, pole vaulting is all about moving your own body rather than something else.
I ended up spending the summer doing nearly the exact same kind of training I had done when I was involved with gymnastics as a child. They even had a metal bar strung between two trees in the woods where I could swing and do giants a la Mitch Gaylord in “American Anthem.” I tried (successfully) to learn swings to handstand on the home-built outdoor parallel bars and then spent the summer with my boss attempting to teach ourselves how to do a Healy (unsuccessfully, but we made some solid attempts). Watching the 2024 Olympics on a giant screen in the camp’s indoor barn, the whole summer reminded me just how much I love sports — and, above all, how much I love gymnastics.
A great gymnast moves you with the sheer strength and grace of the human body. People often say that track is the “original,” most back-to-basics sport. After all, it’s just about who can run the fastest or throw a heavy rock the furthest. I think gymnastics represents the most fundamental form of athleticism, preparing you to do almost any activity. There used to be a campaign with USA Gymnastics that said “Begin Here. Go Anywhere” pinned to the wall of my gym, and it was true. And, in the opposite direction, I’ve found that all roads lead back to gymnastics.
I’m sad to see the column come to an end. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I loved writing it. Go Jumbos.
