For me, gymnastics wasn’t competitive. It was my artistic expression through a combination of athletics, dance and stunt work. I looked forward to every class and loved the other girls and how we supported each other. And yet, as members of the recreational tumbling class at Golden Gymnastics, we felt like second class citizens, in awe of the athletes on the competitive team. Us rec girls were placated by the coaching staff while the team girls were celebrated, with their pictures hanging on the wall, and medals hanging around their necks. I’ll always remember the intimidation I felt as each gymnast strut past an invisible me in their designer leotards that made mine look like a toddler’s onesie. At ten years-old, the adults in your life encourage you to reach for the stars because through hard work and dedication, anything is possible… but yet, I didn’t dare to dream such heights as making team. But then one day, I got the call. “Poppy, we would like you to join the girl’s Golden Gymnastic Team and compete against the best gymnasts around.” My god, this was it, time to say goodbye to the world I loved. I wished my former rec gymnasts luck and told them to work hard, so they can follow in my footsteps and achieve similar greatness and transform their beloved hobby into something fiercely competitive and cutthroat.
At the first practice, when Coach handed me my team leotard, I was so full of pride that I refused to let the fact that it was slightly stained and with another girl’s name, Sophia, stitched on the side, bring me down. And sure, it was a little disappointing to take the mat with my new teammates and still feel a little invisible but hey, I made the team! First, we stretched but once we started practicing, Coach pulled me aside. She told me to forget everything I loved about the sport, especially the little flashes of individual expression in my floor routine which are now considered mistakes that would lose the team points. When she adjusted my beam dismount, I told her that this way felt mechanical. She said exactly.
As the weeks passed, I dreaded practices yet I didn’t say anything. Being on team was what I wanted and was so proud of… there had to be something wrong with me, right? Then, while on the uneven bars I suffered what gymnasts call a “rip”. That’s when the soft skin on your palm is literally ripped off by the bars and it is as excruciatingly painful as it sounds. I screamed, showed Coach my palm and she gathered my teammates around. She said this was a rite of passage and took out the hand sanitizer. “Isn’t that going to hurt?” “Only a lot,” she answered. She squirted me with what felt like fire mixed with razors and the other girls clapped, reminiscing about their first time. And as they did, I looked over at my old rec girls, flipping around on the far side of the gym, and I remembered silently the sport I used to love. That’s when I realized there wasn’t anything wrong with me. My new relationship with gymnastics was wrong. To me, gymnastics wasn’t about medals or perfect dismounts. And it certainly wasn’t about having this psycho squirt gooey ethanol onto an open wound. It was about flipping and dancing and putting your physical being in dangerous situations and positions and then laughing that you somehow survived. And it was about doing that with friends in rec.
When I returned my leotard to Coach and told her I was headed back to rec, she said I was a disappointment and had no business wearing Sophia’s old leo anyway. I told her I agreed with her. I mean, I’m not Sophia. I’m Poppy. And hand sanitizer still gives me PTSD.