A Day in the Life of a College Gymnast: Expectations vs. Reality in the Early Months of College

Committing to your perfect school, preparing for this big transition, and getting excited for what is to come in the next four years is a pretty universally joyful experience for athletes who are ready to embark on this next chapter. Regardless of when you made your decision of where to pursue this dream, the time from the commitment to actually getting there is a lot of just thinking and hoping for what this experience is going to look like. Fast forward to now, almost two months in and being in a pretty consistent routine, everyone is now fully aware of what this dream looks like on a day to day basis. 

The reality vs. expectation of it all. 

Whether this is your first year or your final season in the NCAA, there is a lot of reflection already about what you thought this journey might look like compared to how it actually measures up; the good, the bad, and everything in between. We spend so much time building up these expectations for years prior, whether or not we realize it, about what we think the college experience is going to look like versus what it actually is panning out to be. Everyone has their own unique experience, but in an attempt to make this as wide-reaching as possible, there are a handful of common expectations that might be looking completely different just two months in. 

One of the biggest and most important parts of my own personal journey was switching schools and utilizing the transfer portal. Many athletes in the past few seasons have normalized the use of this tremendous resource and made it less scary and much more common than in the past decade. However,  you don’t go into college thinking that this is going to be a part of the plan for you. Although I am so grateful for the change that happened, I didn’t go into school thinking that I would not start and end at the same place. You have the expectation that where you commit is going to be the place you make your lifelong friends, get your degree, and finish your gymnastics career out, but, as we have seen in the past few seasons, and with the transfer portal becoming more active with each passing year, this may not always be the case. 

Going hand in hand with this are coaching changes throughout the time you are a part of the program. You expect the people who are with the program when you commit to be the ones who are there throughout your career. Just in my time, I had eleven different coaches, counting assistants as well as head coaches, who I am very grateful I had the opportunity to be coached by, but I was certainly not expecting the change. It’s a wonderful experience getting to build new relationships and learn from people you may not previously have had the chance to learn from in the past, but going in, you think the people you start the process with are the ones you will take a graduation picture with, and a lot of times, this is not the case. 

While these two expectations may be in more of the grand scheme of things, they are both aspects you might not have realized were things you were actively thinking about when it came to a collegiate career.  However, these are both big things that could absolutely change the course of how you once pictured your experience versus how it actually ends up looking when your time with the program is up. 

Diving more into the actual gymnastics expectations, from what practices may look like, the relationships you build with the coaches and your teammates, making lineups and competing, all these aspects really never stop changing. While yes, there is a foundational routine you establish for a day to day basis, but NCAA gymnastics is incredibly different from club, but potentially in ways you would not have imagined. One of the most common misconceptions coming from club to the NCAA is that you do ‘less’ gymnastics, but in my opinion, this is far from the truth. While there may be some lighter practice days that you may not have previously had before coming to school, you are competing two to three times more than you are used to, already more gymnastics. You expect there to be less numbers in NCAA and and maybe shorter practices due to the 20 hour a week cap, but you really utilize whatever time you have in the gym to its fullest. This reality definitely changes depending on what time of the season it is. Preseason is heavy with more numbers, but also more time to rest on off days during the week and the weekends, whereas season, yes, there may be less time to actually practice during the week with the way a travel schedule falls, but competing week after week arguably takes more of a toll. 

Another aspect that athletes coming into the NCAA might have expectations around is the actual competition aspect. When you commit to a school to be a part of the team, you expect you are going to compete that season, not really knowing how competitive this part of collegiate athletics truly is. You compete every week within the team to get to compete for the team, and this is one of the hardest adjustments when becoming an NCAA athlete. In club gymnastics, even if an event wasn’t quite exactly where it needed to be going into a competition, you still competed regardless. It’s a big change getting to college and literally having to be on your game at all times during the season in order to actually get to that point of getting out on the competition floor. With this also comes other realities that you may never have seen like going a whole competition year and maybe never seeing a lineup or having to stay home when the rest of the team is travelling that week, and honestly, both of these are really isolating, another aspect not nearly talked about enough. 

All of these expectations turned into realities may all seem negative, but it’s just the way you look at it. If it’s the transfer portal, you get to experience two (or maybe more) new programs that you might have never gotten to be a part of, and the same goes for coaching changes in getting to learn from some people that might literally change your life. With the gymnastics and competition aspect, it’s not something to be looked at negatively, but something to be aware of as you enter this chapter. You do have to really work hard when you all get to the same environment, regardless of whether you were a five-star recruit coming in or a walk-on your freshman year; the playing field is equal when it comes to who is the best fit to put up when it really counts. 

There is also so much good that you might not have expected, and one of the biggest for me was the people I met along the way. I was always a pretty shy person, I never competed as a part of a club team, so I was primarily by myself in this, and entered college with the mindset of such; that I had to be hyper independent and not ask for help or lean on others when I needed it. This is definitely the biggest takeaway for me because my reality was the complete opposite. I had such a village with both programs from my roommates helping me come out of my shell, my teammates being the people I turned to when I needed help, and the coaches I leaned on when things got difficult in and out of the gym. 

While there are so many other expectations you may have entering the collegiate world, the reality of it all is everything, the good and the bad is truly all for a reason and a part of your journey that is going to make your experience truly unique for you. 

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Article by Julianna Roland