After having my heart broken by a bunch of sorority girls during rush, I tried to put on a happy face and get on with my big plans for my sophomore year. One of the biggest components of that plan was the gymnastics team.

Perhaps a little history is necessary. I was a competitive gymnast from about age seven to 14. During those years, I went to gymnastics practice five days a week, three and a half hours a day. I took it very seriously, and my coaches and parents and team and teammates took it very seriously. We were working toward becoming world-class. I always dreamed I�d go to the Olympics. Looking back now, I realize how much of a long shot that was, but at the time I thought it was a real possibility, and it was my goal.

Anyway, as you can imagine, gymnastics was my life. It took up all of my free time. I don�t even remember junior high school. I took study hall instead of PE and my mom picked me up from school early so I could get to practice. Some summers, we had double workouts � three or four hours in the morning, then three or four more hours at night.

I loved it. You had to love it to put yourself through it. I suppose there were girls who did it for other reasons, like a parent�s pressure, but not me. I did it because I loved it. My parents never pushed me. I pushed myself.

It was intense. I know my mom feels a little guilty in retrospect about the pressures and everything I was under (even though she couldn�t have made me stay home). Workouts were grueling, coaches were not always nice, it was hard on our little bodies, competitions were stressful and sometimes disappointing. But like I said, nobody made me do it but me.

And man, I was in great shape. I didn�t have an ounce of fat on my body � I was pure muscle. I had always been tiny, and all the working out delayed my growth even more. We were all so tough. Our hands were callused from the bars, and every once in a while the calluses would rip and your palms would bleed and you�d have this horribly painful open sore on your hand and the coaches showed no mercy and made you keep doing your bar routines. I had bruises all over my body from falling and straddling the beam (yes, it does happen) or falling during a dismount or banging my hips on the bars. I was a really tough little kid.

I could do more push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups than any kid (boy or girl) in my school. I was the smallest in my class, but I always won the sprints and the long jumps. Our strength training was enough to make a football player cry � we�d have to sit in squats against the wall for 10 minutes, or hold handstands against the wall until girls started collapsing on their heads. I was so flexible it was disgusting � I could clasp my hands behind my back and bring my arms up backwards and over my head to the front without letting go. We used to have to do over-splits � where you put your front leg on a mat and your back leg on a mat and go into the splits so your middle would sink down below either leg. We�d have to sit in the splits like that for five minutes at a time � your legs would start shaking, some girls would cry, and then the coaches would just make you do it longer.

I was fairly successful in my gymnastics career. But I had to work hard at it. I didn�t have as much natural talent as some of the other girls. I used to get so frustrated when new skills seemed to come so easily to some people, while I had to work for months and months to learn something new. And some of the girls on my team had such bad attitudes and were so snotty to the coaches, but because they were good they got away with it. I was one of the kids who had to play by the rules to get the same attention and advantages as some of the others.

Anyway, when I was 14 I gave up gymnastics. There was a lot that went into that decision that I won�t go into now. Let�s just say that it was one of the most difficult decisions I�ve made.

But I was happy with it. I did cheerleading in high school, so I still did the flips and jumps and all that fancy stuff. My gymnastics background certainly served me well.

But I don�t think you ever get gymnastics out of your system. I think it�s because you do it at such a young age. It�s part of your formative years. It�s who you are. I will always be a gymnast in my heart. It�s in my blood.

So I decided to return to it. I had played around at the gym at Davis during my freshman year, and I�d gone to the meets, and I saw the team doing things that I�d done when I was 14. So I decided to give it a try.

I�ve already said that it was a lot of hard work to get myself back into shape for doing real gymnastics again. I did it. But I think I was surprised at how hard it really was. And things that I�d done easily at 14 weren�t so easy at 19 or 20. I wasn�t the best on the team. It was questionable whether I�d even get to compete.

But, again, I loved it. I loved being a part of the team. It made me feel like I belonged to something real for the first time at Davis. I became friends with women who�d grown up just like me.

THEN one day I was practicing my floor routine. I love my floor music � it was the theme song from �Forrest Gump� and it was beautiful. There was a chance I might get to do my floor routine in the upcoming meet, and I wanted desperately to have the opportunity to be in at least one competition that year. So I went for my first tumbling pass, which was a twist. My feet landed on the mat, but my body kept twisting. The top half of my left leg twisted right out of the bottom half, and it was the most agonizing pain I have ever experienced as I felt my knee rip completely out of joint and then snap back in. It makes me sick to even think about it.

I had torn my ACL. My season was over. For the second time that year, I was heartbroken. I felt like everything I�d hoped for had just been destroyed. I felt like all the hard work I�d done was for nothing. I felt like my whole world was crashing down around me. Mostly, I felt like nothing I tried to do in Davis worked out. It was like I was cursed, doomed to failure.

I had reconstructive surgery during that spring break, then walked around in a giant brace for a couple of months. I did months of rehab, and I took it very seriously because I was planning on being back on that team the next year.

It didn�t exactly work out that way. I did everything I could, and I returned to the team the next fall, but after a few weeks the coach basically said there wasn�t a place for me. He didn�t kick me off the team, exactly, but he made it pretty clear that there wasn�t much use in my staying. One more blow.

So that�s how my gymnastics career ended. It was pretty much squelched. Nobody can say I didn�t try.

THE GYMNASTS

Small tense faces,

fearless wide eyes

of tight soldiers

lined up for battle.

Twisting and turning,

each trick a perfect habit,

muscles taut,

mind set: focus

on the task and fight.

Point the toes,

head high,

flick the wrist,

shoulders back.

The crack

of the mind hurts

more than the crack

of a knee

tearing out of socket.

And in the end,

too old, bruised, tired,

like Veterans haunted,

the smell of this death lingers,

smells like sweat,

chalk dust,

the sick excitement

of marching into competition

where few win

and all lost.

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