Most gymnastics fans only see what happens during the meet, but over my last few Day in the Life stories, I’ve taken you behind the scenes to preseason intersquads, meet day secrets you won’t learn on TV, and into the mind of a gymnast with a look at first meet jitters, I have had the chance to speak with wonderful current and former college athletes; but this time around, I’ll be telling my own story of the pressures of competing and what securing a lineup spot looked like through my five years.
On a team of anywhere from 15 to 25 athletes, only a handful will get to compete. There are 24 competition routines, and 20 of those routines count toward the team score; but, unfortunately, there aren’t 20 athletes that get to go. Throughout the five years I competed, I have had completely different experiences with making lineups, what these decisions looked like for me, and how they affected me from a mental standpoint.
Coming into my freshman year at Bridgeport, all I wanted to do was contribute. I was so excited to be a part of a team, and my goal that first year was to just compete at all. This pressure going into freshman year looks very different from the rest of your career. This first year you are essentially proving yourself. You have to show the coaches you not only deserve a spot, but also show them that you will consistently deliver in this position and be the athlete they recruited you to be. There’s this lingering pressure you have to always be at your best because you have no college competition experience to back up why you should be in the lineups. But the reality is, being a student-athlete is a lot of work, and you can’t be your best every single day and that’s ok! (it took me a long time to come to this realization.)
Looking back on my freshman year, this was the best first year I could have asked for. I was a part of a wonderful team with girls who are still my best friends today. I have memories that I still cherish five years later, and I accomplished what I set out to do and had the best time doing it. However, this first year put even more pressure on the next.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone who might be reading this, it would be to accept the current version of you. Going into my second year at Bridgeport, I put overwhelming amounts of pressure on myself to do better than I had the first year. Throughout the season, I was comparing sophomore me to freshman me, and this was not one of my better ideas. Some people call this the “sophomore slump”; when you have a great first year, and then the next, you get into your head, questioning, “Why doesn’t this feel the same as it did last year?’ and, “Am I as good as I was last season?” feeding yourself the “I have to live up to that past version” mentality.
What I have learned as I watched this doubt creep in for others, and watched myself fall out of love with the sport, was that you’ll never be that version of you, and again, that’s ok! (another really difficult pill to swallow). You’re a year older, your body probably hurts a little bit more, you have to be a student before the athlete part, and all of this is difficult. This second year of my career took a toll on me as I know it unfortunately does for a lot of people who have gone through this struggle, and sadly, it did take away the joy.
This ‘slump’ is difficult, but it only lasts how long you allow it to. Mine lasted a couple of months and I struggled throughout the time off from COVID-19 to even want to think about doing gymnastics again. But, I learned throughout this time away how to take the pressure off, even just a little bit, enjoy competing, and love gymnastics again.
I attribute my change in attitude to the people around me at the time and the advice and love they gave me when coming onto a new team and competing again. After transferring to Temple, one of my former Bridgeport teammates and I came in four days (!) before the first meet and had to be ready to compete. Reading this, you might be thinking “Talk about pressure”, but this was the most relaxed I had ever felt competing.
I distinctly remember telling one of the seniors on the team she looked so calm competing and asking how she got to this state of mind. She told me, “When I salute, I already proved I can do it; the coaches put me in this position because I have shown I’m capable. Now I just have to do it one more time.” This truly was some of the best advice I had gotten in my collegiate career, and I carried it with me for the remainder of my time at Temple.
My junior year was by far the best, most memorable year of my career. We won our conference championship, we qualified to regionals as a team for the first time in 20 years, and I just had fun. This year was so enjoyable because I trusted myself and what I had already shown I could do. I was surrounded by a wonderful group of teammates who were accepting of two new people joining their team, a coach who gave me an opportunity I never dreamed I would have, and I just appreciated the way I felt.
The point of this part of my journey is that the pressure will always be there; to be in the lineups, to have to fight for your spot, and the actual pressure of delivering when it counts. In my junior year, I learned how to turn this pressure into an appreciation for something I thought I might not have the chance to do again, and this perspective change made all the difference.
Going into my senior year, I knew my chapter as an athlete was coming to an end, so everything was a bit more nostalgic. I struggled a lot my last two years with the actual physical part of doing gymnastics, so much so that I wasn’t even sure if I would make the lineups. Specifically, my last year doing gymnastics, this became really difficult, and the competition to make the lineups intensified.
Our lineups were based on many different things; consistency in the gym with assignments, performance during intrasquads, and your actual performance during competitions. Even though I had been in the lineups consistently for the past four years, I constantly questioned whether I deserved to be now. In the third meet of the season, my super senior year, I fell on beam, which I was now specializing in, and my immediate thought was, “Oh my gosh, there goes my spot.”
This is such a real fear and something I know every other athlete experiences when they make a mistake. This pressure builds until you get that next chance to prove you can do it. Looking back, I regret how much these mistakes took a toll on my mind. Every time I went into the gym, I was trying so hard not to make a mistake that gymnastics became about getting a spot rather than enjoying these last moments. I knew my role on just one event made it easy to replace me with a multi-event athlete. I became so fixated on this that the pressure of solely wanting to be in one lineup spot took away my joy in my last year.
The journey to compete and achieve your dreams carries intense pressure, a sentiment many athletes can relate to. My final piece of advice for anyone who might be experiencing these emotions, or has felt this looking back, is to give yourself grace. Trusting in yourself and the effort you’ve already put forth is key.
Like the advice I received my junior year, you have already done the work and done all you can to advocate for yourself, and the rest of the decisions are out of your control. My competition experiences are some of my favorite memories, but coupled with the pressure, I would like to go back and try my best to take this out of the equation. I would tell myself to let myself be human. It’s okay to make these mistakes and to not always be at 100%, even though no athlete wants that. It’s more so about how you respond and come back from these challenges, how you change your perspective, and how you use this nervous energy and pressure for good. Then you can find joy in what you came to do and that makes the difference as a whole.
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Article by Julianna Roland
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