Gymnastics may be a hobby that many Berkeley High School students dabbled in as kids, but very few have stuck with the sport due to the high demands that are attached.
Artistic gymnastics is a sport in which athletes perform short choreographed routines, which includes executing aerials, flips, and much more. Learning these skills can be fun for the thrill of flight and can also give high amounts of satisfaction to gymnasts for personal achievement.
Beyond that, gymnastics also provides the opportunity to gain skills outside of sport itself.
“(Gymnastics) has taught me time management, how to balance different things, (and that) if you want to do something you have to work hard for it,” BHS junior Lila McMahon said, “Gymnastics teaches you that you can do things that you thought you couldn’t do before.”
Despite the positives, many gymnasts end up quitting young. The sport requires a specific and demanding skill set: strength, flexibility, body control, and a plethora of other technical abilities. Gaining these abilities takes immense time and effort, and the payoff is not enough for some.
The hard work needed in order to achieve these standards isn’t the only thing that drives students away. For many, it’s hard to continue participating in gymnastics because of the financial barrier.
Gymnastics can be incredibly expensive, especially as gymnasts grow and move to higher skill levels, with the median price of participating in competitive gymnastics reaching eight thousand dollars per year, according to Gymnastics Online.
McMahon has been doing gymnastics for over ten years. In the future, she hopes to compete in collegiate gymnastics, and puts in the extra work outside of school.
For her, gymnastics is an extremely time consuming sport. Because each skill in gymnastics is so particular and takes so much time to master, extra time at practice is a necessity. McMahon spends more than 24 hours a week at her gym.
“We practice from four to eight on weekdays and nine to one on Saturdays. You can also do private (lessons) ... which takes extra time,” she said.
With so much time spent in the gym, injury is almost inevitable. For McMahon, it’s been a setback in her and her teammate’s gymnastics careers multiple times. “For pretty much everyone, (there are) injuries all of the time,” she said.
That being said, for gymnasts, it’s more difficult to take time off. BHS junior Minerva Burley has been doing competitive gymnastics for eight years and explained that coming back from injury in gymnastics can be tedious.
“There’s not much else you can do outside of gymnastics to train to get back into it. It’s a lot of endurance and a lot of muscles that you don’t use on a day-to-day basis,” Burley said.
BHS senior Neshia Geoghegan has experienced challenges with injury first hand, and is currently out with a back injury. “It’s really hard because the more time you take off the sport, the harder it’s going to be to come back,” Geoghegan said. For many gymnasts, there’s a fine line between wanting to go back to their sport but not wanting to further their injury, as gymnastics is extremely physically demanding and going back too early can be detrimental.
Despite the intensity and setbacks that gymnastics brings, for McMahon and Geoghegan, it’s worth it. “Our team is super close knit and everyone is so supportive. We have a really good gym culture,” McMahon explained.
Because they’re at the gym for at least 24 hours a week, the gymnasts are able to form extremely close bonds with their teammates after spending so much time together. “We all push each other to be better, but are also supportive to each other at the same time,” Geoghegan said, “Everyone is always cheering, and if you’re down, someone’s there to pick you back up. We’re all really, really close.”