Months of anticipation and preparation have led to this moment, and now, competition season is here! Throughout the first few weeks of December, we have gotten glimpses of potential lineups, newcomers for the first time in their home arenas, and overall team depth from preseason intrasquads. Now, sparkly leo season is here!
Whether you are a first-year adjusting to college life or a sixth-year starting to feel sentimental about “last firsts”, one of the most difficult aspects of this second semester is learning how to balance life with competition season. The next three months are about to be filled with doing homework on long bus rides, a little more heightened nerves about competing, and always feeling like you need a nap, but also so much joy and memories you will cherish forever.
Finding this balance is not something that comes right away, and at least in my own experience, it is not something you ever fully figure out. Looking back on my freshman year, this might have been the “easiest” year to balance, simply because the excitement I felt outweighed any type of anxiety I may have had from any other aspect of my life. During my sophomore year, however, I started to feel a bit more stress around meet season, but unfortunately, I didn’t yet understand how to cope.
During freshman year, a majority of your schedule is made up of introductory courses and mandatory classes that everyone will eventually need to graduate. As you move into sophomore and junior year, these classes get much more specific to the major you are pursuing and with that, carry more weight to excel in. This second year, for me, was more difficult to manage in large part due to a more challenging class load and what was expected from me in the student part of my new role. Learning how to balance these expectations of being a student with maintaining a certain GPA and attempting to keep up with new materials and assignments on top of being at your best in the gym is challenging. From my own experience, gymnastics was one of the highest academic excelling teams at both programs I was at; while you definitely feel a sense of pride when it is all said and done, getting to this point and learning how to manage these expectations is something every student-athlete has to get used to and balance in their own way.
However, this was not the only thing weighing on me during this second year. For the most part as a first year, you come in feeling relatively fresh; you’ve put in the work during the summer leading up to this year, but your body hasn’t had to endure a three-month-long, every weekend, season. Going into sophomore year, I was experiencing much more pain than I could ever remember having, and balancing this extra piece of going to our trainers, doing rehab, and feeling the stress of, “Am I going to be able to compete?” takes a toll. Looking back on this year, this was also the first time I can remember really struggling mentally with gymnastics. I have shared in the past about the importance of caring for your brain as much as your body, but, at that time in my career and the environment I was in, this was seemingly not a priority. This second year, I lacked balance because I was solely focused on doing what was expected of me in the gym and everything else suffered as a result.
After COVID and during the year I transferred, this was the first time I really learned how to manage all that was going on in addition to competing. On paper, transferring a few days before the first competition, moving to a new place by myself, and having to be one of the new people in a tight-knit group, should have added up to the most overwhelming year. However, it was truly the opposite. A large part of what I learned during those few initial weeks at Temple was to not take anything for granted. Everyone who has made it this far in their career deserves to celebrate this accomplishment, and acknowledging the position you are in puts everything into perspective.
Everyone has their own way of finding this balance, and for me, it was making sure I took one thing at a time. I definitely have the ‘overthinking, overplanning’ traits about myself, and sometimes this really worked in my favor. However, what I noticed just in one year was how much I was missing by trying too hard to find balance. The biggest switch I felt from my sophomore to junior year was learning how to enjoy the moments I’ve been given, and not to put such pressure on myself. With a sport defined by perfection, it has embedded in gymnasts a sense of having to achieve just to be seen, and that unfortunately bleeds over into every aspect of life. Not everything has to be perfect all the time; school work doesn’t have to be in weeks before, not every practice has to be the best practice ever, and trying too hard for this takes away from the experience more than any of us realize.
The stress I felt during my sophomore year was something I was determined to never slip back into, and during my time at Temple, I found better ways to cope with this stress. I didn’t ever think I would have an opportunity to do gymnastics at a collegiate level again, so, when I got to Temple, I quite literally learned how to count my blessings. One of the things I took up during my last three years was journaling; I know everyone has their own ways of reflecting, but, one thing I found helpful during a time when life can feel too much to handle, is to really just take it one day at a time. I started going through my days, pulling the highlights and writing them down every night so that was the last thing I thought about moving into the next. While some days it was hard to find the good, really trying to find positivity every day made me much more grateful for the experience, and put any stress I was feeling into perspective.
Going into the competition season, there is so much to look forward to, but it is a time when anxiety can be at an all-time high. The stressors of competing well, making lineups, and staying healthy during this period are likely at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but enjoying these moments and checking in on yourself is equally as necessary. You learn how to balance life and school with gymnastics during the season, and while it does take time, and the routine won’t ever be perfect, I at least found comfort in knowing we were all going through this together. I had the most wonderful support system in my teammates, and knowing they all had their own things they had to learn to balance, made me feel like I could too.
During my final semester, I was student teaching, practicing at night, and competing on the weekends, and even when it felt like it was too much, I knew I would be okay because of the way I had learned to manage. Asking for help from the people around you is something I was always so scared to do, but once I did, I knew I always had people around to help lift me back up. My biggest piece of advice would be to find a way to manage this schedule that works for you, because this is definitely not a one size fits all approach. Lean on the people around you to help you, check in with yourself, and intentionally carve out time to make sure you, not as a gymnast, not as a student, but as a person are okay. Most importantly in finding this balance, learn how to enjoy the moments you will only have here and now.
Life during meet season is a lot to handle, and while you will undoubtedly take away the discipline you learn from this time into life after the sport, finding a way to fit in joy, put whatever challenges you may be facing into perspective that you will get through them, and allowing yourself to make these memories from truly a once in a lifetime experience.
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Article by Julianna Roland
