The first memory I have of doing gymnastics is wearing a long-sleeved pink tutu leotard, trying to make over a backward roll in my very first floor routine at the club gym I grew up in. The last memory I have of doing gymnastics is holding my final finish a couple of seconds longer than normal after my beam routine at our 2023 conference championships and running to hug my coaches. Those twenty years in between, gymnastics was the majority, if not all of my identity, and then, it all started to change.
Every time I introduced myself, it was always my name and “I’m a gymnast.” From the age of two in Mommy & Me classes, to 22 and finishing my career, being an athlete was how I self-identified for almost all of these two decades. Coming home on the bus that Sunday after conference, going to student-teaching the next morning, the beginning of the sentence shifted from ‘I am…” to “I was…” and no one prepares you for how hard that is.
Since I have been done with gymnastics, I have been able to reflect on the entirety of my career and see how beautiful it was to have something so hard to say goodbye to. Leaving the sport is a loss, and it’s one you have to grieve. You have dedicated your life up until this point to the same thing; you have put other parts of your life on hold to prioritize the one thing you love the most, and when it’s over, you have to acknowledge what’s missing.
Personally, I was the super senior who celebrated the ‘first-last’ everything, so, I was somewhat preparing myself throughout my last season, really trying to take in all these final moments. However, when it was actually the ‘very-last’, losing this part of myself still hurt more than I anticipated.
I graduated two months later, said goodbye to my best friends, and moved out of my apartment. Although I was excited to come home and have my first ‘normal’ summer experience without thinking about preseason in the months to come, I honestly had no idea what to do with myself. As a major ‘type A’ person, for the first time in my life, I didn’t have a schedule. I didn’t have a four-hour practice block sectioned out in my day for the first time ever. I had no one telling me I had to work out or do my rehab; I was just living my life, and I really didn’t know how.
When you leave any sport, especially when it gets to a level where it gets to be one, if not the biggest aspect of your life, it can be difficult to figure out where to go and what to do next. In my own experience, I struggled with this transition because I didn’t yet know who I was outside of being an athlete. I couldn’t find a way significant or meaningful enough to get closure with this chapter of my life. I saw everyone in my graduating class from across the country saying goodbye to gymnastics on social media, sharing their most precious highlights and memories from their time in the NCAA, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the same. Actually being retired from the sport just felt like a break, it didn’t feel permanent, and for a while, I just allowed myself to believe it was a hiatus and I would go back and do it again, even though I knew I wouldn’t.
While I can only speak for myself, I had to go through a lot to actually get closure with this chapter of my life before I could look back and see all the beautiful moments and focus on the good, the people, and the happiness gymnastics had brought me for the past twenty years. My own career, as I unfortunately know too many who experienced the same in their own, came with heavy baggage that might have overshadowed the good. This looks different for everyone, no matter where it may have stemmed from, but being able to identify these pain points, talk about them, and deal with my feelings, allowed me to go back and focus on the happiest memories I choose to carry with me today. When I figured out how to do this, I really did feel like I was able to move on, but I still didn’t quite know to what.
You graduate school, you go home, you get a job, you move on; it’s how life post-athletics was laid out to us before graduation. Honestly, I don’t know too many people who that actually happened to in the way we thought it would. In the past two years, I have become such an avid believer in ‘there’s already a path set, you just need to follow it.’ I thought I would graduate, become a high school teacher, decorate my classroom the way I have always imagined, and then everything else would just fall into place. In my case, life had several other plans. I would apply for teaching jobs and never hear back, or get told I need more experience, or receive the ‘Thank you for considering our school, however…” email that made me feel like I really didn’t know what I was doing.
But again, maybe life just had other plans for me then. In June, right after graduation, I started writing for College Gym News, which has given me incredible opportunities I didn’t know were possible. When I went home, I walked into my club gym to see one of our coaches was moving across the country and got asked to take over her team. That summer, I got the opportunity to choreograph over sixty beam and floor routines and work on my skills in that realm. Gymnastics started pulling me in a different way, and I wasn’t even looking for it. I thought I had made peace with my time in the sport and was ready to move on, and as much as I thought this chapter of my life had ended, this door opened hundreds of other more beautiful ones I never expected.
One of the biggest aspects I struggled with as I knew my time as an athlete was coming to an end was the identity crisis I knew I was going to face. In reading that, maybe it seems a little “dramatic” to not know who you are after sports, but I really didn’t, and I know I’m not alone in that sense. Your entire childhood and early adult life is dedicated to this one thing, and then one day, that thing that defined you is gone; how do you move on from that without being a little confused? What life after gymnastics has taught me is that being an athlete was not my identity, it helped build the foundation for my identity now, and it continues to every day.
Gymnasts are typically categorized as people with the best time management and perfectionist mentalities, but there is so much more to take away from this. Being given the current opportunities I have now, I truly believe this is what allowed my relationship with the sport to heal. I get to work with athletes who I have the chance to give a positive experience to, and hopefully help them find their love for gymnastics like I did at that age. I have the chance to instill confidence and kindness in those athletes that maybe I didn’t have growing up in gymnastics. I get to watch them grow, give them their very first floor routines (and now I’m getting to give them their last as they head to college), and be a small part of their journeys in whatever way I was able to.
My life after sports doesn’t look how I might have pictured it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. Leaving gymnastics, I had to make peace with the past and learn not only how to heal from it, but how to grow into the person I am still becoming. This transition looks different for all athletes, and it really is okay to be sad about this part that’s going away. However, this part of my life will always be a piece of me in some capacity. Now what I choose to carry with me is not only the joyful moments the sport has brought me, but using the skills I have learned from gymnastics and the people I have encountered to be someone I am becoming proud to be after this chapter.
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Article by Julianna Roland
