Getting to today has been a journey of its own. Only a year and a half ago I was incapable of doing a giant on the bars. I still remember that day in October of 2008 when I entered Fetzer gym C for my first practice with the UNC Gymnastics Club. I had no idea what to expect, all I wanted was to get back on the sport after almost 5 long years of not being able to practice it. As expected I was out of shape and although I still had a kip my giants would not make it over the bar. My right leg wore a huge metallic brace to remind me of my ACL repair I had had about two years prior after my futile attempt to return to gymnastics while in College in Maine. That same first day I met Scott Wilson, I don’t remember what our first interaction was but it must have been something within the lines of me talking to Ashley (a teammate and then president of the Club) about gymnastics and she saying that if I ever needed a spot that that guy (pointing at Scott who probably was about to vault a handspring front) will safe my life in all occasions, some kind of hand shaking followed and that was it.
I looked at Scott with awe and admiration ever since I met him, ever since I heard the stories of how good of a spotter he was. It wasn’t until December of 2008 that I got to move past the legends and actually got to know Scott. A trip to his hometown gym made me fall in love with the possibility of training with him, in a span of three days he had taught me a double back on floor. A skill that I had only dreamt to do, I think I lied by telling him that I had done it once in training, truth most speak now that I had never ever done a double back before. Not only was his spotting ability close to perfection but his coaching skills (being able to explain progressions to skills, skills themselves and give me confidence on doing them) were impeccable. I was hooked!
From then on my gymnastics level began to improve at a very quick rate, despite the fact that I only practiced three nights a week. I continued working on my double tuck on floor and a pak salto on bars. As expected for a 21 year-old gymnast, injuries began to show up. First my achilles tendon, followed by an annular tare in my lower back. That is when Cheryl Thomas (my physical therapist) became my lifesaver, one by one we solved those issues, and of course new ones appeared and so on, but I kept going. Around March I had a dream, in my dream I became an elite gymnast and went to the Panamerican games. It was just a dream but I found myself contemplating the idea, I immediately started day dreaming about Scott training me and so on. I went to practice at UNC that evening and told my dream to Scott. He laughed and after a couple of minutes he turned around and told me: Do you really want to be an elite gymnast? I said: yes, I have always wondered how far I could go on the sport and I don’t want to be in doubt anymore. Scott looked at me and said: I’ll train you!. I was ecstatic, although the excitement only lasted for a couple hours before my head began to process thoughts of worry and uncertainty. I was scared, I had hundreds of questions such as: where would I train (I needed more than 9 hours a week), how feasible is it to get to that level of competition in such a short amount of time? Is he serious or is he just saying that to be nice? Am I good enough, I am a level 7/8 at the most right now, can I really become an elite? etc.
I know this is totally obvious and naïf to point out, but day dreaming about something is one pleasant act while trying to make your dreams come true is a totally different beast. In April of 2009 after I had discussed with Scott the possibility of becoming an elite gymnast, I went to the NIGC Nationals and had not a great competition, my difficulty was almost null and I still made lots of mistakes, as one friend of mine (Kristen) said to me last night – you looked like one scared puppy competing at nationals last year. I was discouraged to pursue my dream; I looked over and over at the videos from the meet then watched some elite level gymnastics videos and convinced myself that my dream was unreachable that I wasn’t good enough. I talked to Scott about it and he got me back on track. I re-thought my reasons why I do gymnastics, and came to the conclusion that I do gymnastics not because I want to be an elite gymnast and win medals but because I want to challenge myself and see how far I can go in a sport that I love and I am good at. As the Miley Cyrus song says: It is all about the climb not about what is waiting on the other side (cheesy but true).
Serious training began the summer of 2009; I began practicing four nights a week, training two days at UNC and two days at Impact Atheltics a private gymnastics club where Scott had long been working as a compulsory level coach. We began with a lot of conditioning but a couple of weeks into training I sprained my ankle, bars became my event working on: blind changes, front giants, ginger, pak etc. The only good thing about my injury was that it gave me time to study for my MCAT which was coming up in September. My first meet after summer training was in November at a NIGC competition at Virginia Tech. At that point I was training five times a week for three hour. I competed a double pike, whip half front tuck and a full on floor. A flick flick layout step out, switch lip back tuck, and switch half on beam. I could not compete on bars because of a shoulder injury and on vault I performed a tsuck layout. Our goal for the summer was accomplished, training to become a level 10 by November. To my bad luck I injured myself on vault landing short so I was out from the gym for three weeks again. At this exact same time, Impact went out of business and so the Impact gymnastics team was left without a gym to practice. For over a month I was able to only train twice a week at UNC with an injured ankle and a shoulder in the process of healing.
Back in the summer I had talked to my ex-coach from Mexico Cesar Arzate about my comeback and the possibility of me competing at District games a qualifying meet for National Championships 2010. The meet was going to be host in Mexico City sometime in March. For all this months since we started working out in the summer Scott and I had the immediate goal to go to Districts in March and later on Mexico Nationals in April 2010, to prepare for that I was going to compete JO level 10 with Impact but injuries and the circumstances with what happened to Impact made it not work out. My only meet before district games was the one in Virginia. The months of November, December and early January where lost months in terms of training, between having no gym to train at, injuries, school vacation and MD/PhD interviews, it became almost impossible to make any progress, but somehow we managed to get ready for Districts. Based on our experienced with the layout tzuckat the meet in Virginia, Scott and I began working on learning a yurchenko on vault a week before Districts. I went to District Games in March, as usual I was injured (this time it was my back and my ankle) but my performance was good enough to qualify to Nationals. After Districts I had a little bit over three weeks (believe it or not more time than I had had to prepare for Districts) to get up to speed and get ready for Nationals.
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