Grace, Gold, and Glory Read online

  In those days, here’s how my schedule went: school from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon. Car ride from school to Gymstrada between three and three thirty with tons of traffic along the way. A quickie snack (usually apples and bananas or crackers and cheese), followed by as much homework as I could squeeze in while in the backseat of Mom’s white Nissan Altima. And then, of course, gym from four to eight every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and from eight to noon every Saturday morning during my first year in TOPs.

  In that first gymnastics season (btw, the season ran from fall to spring in Region 7, which was my region), I didn’t actually learn many tricks. Since the other girls and I were so young, the coaches thought it was best to build our strength and flexibility by doing a lot of conditioning exercises. That way, once all the tumbling and flipping began, our bodies would be prepared for the action. In my case, that action got started in May 2003, the month I began training to compete at Level 4 in the Junior Olympics (JO) gymnastics program. You have to be at least six years old to compete at a Level 4. I was already seven.

  The JO program has a range of levels — from 1 to 10. Many gyms around the country, including Gymstrada, start at a Level 4, which is the competitive level. Every gymnast works through the levels at his or her own pace. And how do you move up to the next level of difficulty? By earning a minimum score during a competition. You can’t skip over any levels, but you can do more than one level in a year, at least in women’s artistic gymnastics. Once you flip your way through all ten of the JO levels, you can then go on to train at the pre-elite and elite levels. And here’s one last thing to keep straight in your head: JO and TOPs are two different programs. I started out only in TOPs, but by spring 2003, I was doing TOPs and JO at the same time. In other words, I wasn’t exactly sitting around.

  “Let’s go, girls!” my coach called out to me and the other gymnasts one spring afternoon in 2003. About ten of us had gathered for our four-hour training. When you spend as much time together in the gym as we all did, you quickly become close; even our parents spent a lot of time together. To this day, some of the girls I met at Gymstrada — Cassie, Jasmine, Rebecca, and Julia — are still my friends, even though I don’t get the chance to talk to them as much these days.

  Before the start of class, I’d been catching up with one of my very best friends in that group — Kaiya Putman, my giggling buddy back then. Though we were in different groups, we were both Level 4 gymnasts, and we quickly became close. Kaiya’s parents, Robert and Kim, also became good friends with my mom.

  That day’s session began the way most of them did: with our coach handing us a sheet that listed a series of exercises we needed to race through. And what was on that list? Handsprings on the floor; a mount on the beam for an exercise called a scale, which means balancing on one leg while holding the other leg higher than the hip. All that was followed by connecting our beam skills (like scales, leaps, dances, and dismounts) into a complete routine; practicing our uneven bar skills; and then just a couple vaults. And last, if you learned all your skills, you got a treat: a few minutes of play time on the trampoline. “Bet you can’t do this!” Kaiya and I would tease each other before attempting a trick on one of the apparatuses. Then if one of us performed an exercise that really impressed the coach, we’d tease each other: “You’re just trying to show off!” We were kidding, of course — but only sorta.

  When I wasn’t at the gym, I was in school. After my family moved back to Virginia in 2000, Mom enrolled me in pre-K at Greenhill Farms Christian Academy, a private school where many professional people sent their children; Mom enrolled Joy and John there too. Like most parents, Mom did her best to give us a great education — but once she paid the rent and electric bill, she just didn’t have much money to pay for that education. So, thankfully, she qualified for a program that covered half of the tuition for me and my siblings. I spent pre-K and kindergarten at Greenhill Farms in Norfolk before I moved on to first grade at Holland Elementary — the public school where my sister lost my precious you-know-whats. Mom wanted to keep us at Greenhill Farms, but once we moved into our town house near Scarborough Square in 2002, the campus was much too far away.

  I loved school from the beginning. Even in pre-K and kindergarten at Greenhill Farms, Mom says I could spell huge words like loquacious. What was true at the gym was true in the classroom: I caught onto things very fast, and I often had energy left over to jump around once I was done. “Where’s Bali?” a teacher once quizzed me as we looked at a map. Without hesitation, I pointed to the precise location: “It’s right here,” I announced. As Mom stood by with that “I’m so proud!” look on her face, my teacher challenged me with more and more difficult questions. It always felt awesome to get an answer right.

  History is still my favorite subject. In particular, I loved reading about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and not just ‘cause he was black, lol. Can you imagine how much nerve it takes to stand up for what you believe in, even when other people are threatening your life? Dr. King didn’t have to imagine it; he lived it. And in 1963, when he took his place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech, he did far more than just inspire a nation. He helped turn the world into a place where all of us could dream a little bigger.

  In a way, my school time was also my gym time — the tricks never stopped! “Can you do a back flip?” one of my classmates asked me when I was in first grade. “Sure!” I answered before arching my back and lowering my palms to the floor. Over several months, I performed just about every skill I knew — for a price. Then one day Mom noticed my pockets loaded down with quarters, nickels, and dimes and she asked, “Brie, where did you get all this money?” I was like, “When I do tricks for the other kids, they give me their lunch money.” Mom, of course, put an end to that.

  Back then, I was a tomboy. Seriously. You’d think that a girl who tore up the playground just to find a diamond earring would be a total girlie girl — but that phase came (much!) later. At seven, my closest companion was my brother, John. He still is. And like John, I wore sweatpants all the time. Because I was always at the gym, I wore my hair back in a ponytail. Once when John and I were playing tag with a group of his friends, he and the other boys all took off their shirts — so I took off mine too. My mom and sisters were like, “Brie, put your shirt back on — you are not a boy.” Sooo embarrassing!

  On Sundays, just about everything came to a halt — no gym, no school, no tag in the backyard. My family went to Rock Church International, a nondenominational congregation in Virginia Beach. We didn’t go every Sunday; sometimes we just stayed home and rested. But when we went, I loved learning about Jesus. (Plus, we got lollipops.) The only hard part was having to leave the side of my big brother; the classes were separated by age, so John and I were in two classes. I know this might be hard to believe now, but I was shy when I was a little girl. I’d actually cry real tears when John and I had to split up — and I still do, lol!

  God’s grace — that’s something I heard a lot about at church and at home. Grace is all about receiving a gift you did nothing to earn and then passing that gift on to your family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers. Let’s keep it real: I didn’t really understand this whole idea when I was seven. But I now know that grace is the greatest treasure in the universe. If God can love us and forgive us unconditionally, how can we actually hold grudges against other people? I know, I know — at times, it’s really a drag to hand out grace. But that’s what I’m learning to do — even when a certain family member loses my all-time-favorite Christmas gift. Dang it, Joyelle!

  The Disappearance

  After we moved out of my father’s parents’ home in Chesapeake in 2001, I don’t recall seeing my father hardly at all. Every now and then, I’d talk to him on the phone.

  “How are you?” he’d ask, as if we’d just been with each other the day before.

  “Fine,” I’d say. “Where are you, Dad?”

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nbsp; “I’m training,” he usually answered. But that always confused me, because he wasn’t in the military full time.

  In 2003, when I was eight, my father was deployed for eight months to Qatar, a small country in the Middle East. As a member of the reserves unit, he was required to serve a minimum of one weekend per month, along with two weeks of active-duty service each year. Three times during my childhood, he had to complete assignments overseas. Each of his deployments lasted for eight months; from 2008 to 2010, he also served on a temporary active duty assignment on a base in Norfolk, but though he was close by, I still didn’t see him much.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked Mom when Dad was supposed to be home from his duties abroad.

  “He’s on the military base,” Mom often said, trying to protect me from what I was starting to suspect. At least for that moment, her vague answer was enough to satisfy my question — mostly because I wanted so badly to believe that Dad longed to be connected to us. But as weeks of silence turned into months, I was confused: If Dad is back in Virginia, why doesn’t he come around more often? I dreamed of showing my father some of the same tricks I performed for the kids at school. I imagined what it would feel like to have him come to all my meets and cheer me on from the sidelines. The truth is that I missed my father — a lot.

  Chapter Four

  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

  — PHILIPPIANS 4:13, NKJV

  IT’S CALLED A KIP, AND IT’S ONE OF THE TOUGHEST SKILLS A GYMNAST first learns on the uneven bars. The kip begins with pulling yourself up to the low bar in a swing glide, bringing your toes to the bar, hoisting your hips up, and finally holding your whole upper body above the bar. The skill, which can be used to either mount the bar or connect elements in a routine, is a big part of just about every level of competition. That makes it a must-do skill. And in May 2003, I was failing at it. Big time.

  “Put some power into that glide!” my Gymstrada coach, Dana, called out as I struggled to bring my toes up to the bar. Since spring, I’d been practicing all of my Level 4 skills — like the jump to handstand on the vault, the pullover on the bars, and the tuck jump on the beam. None of these tricks is a cinch, but at least I was making steady progress on each of them. Not so with the kip. I’d been trying to master it for nearly a year.

  By June 2003, I’d messed up my kip so many times that I’d lost count. “Whoever gets the kip first wins a trophy,” the coach told my group one afternoon. I wanted that trophy so badly that I could already visualize it standing proudly on a shelf in my bedroom. Each time I took my turn at the bar, I’d sway my body forward, and then gliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide — right down onto the mat beneath the bars. Shoot — I was so close!

  In early 2003, my training time doubled from six hours a week to about twelve. That’s because Level 4 is the level that separates recreational gymnasts from those who are training for serious team competition. In the upcoming fall season, I was preparing to compete at what’s called a compulsory level. What does that mean? It means that in Levels 4 to 6, every gymnast around the country performs the exact same routine at her level on each of the four apparatuses (vault, bars, beam, floor — and, yes, it always goes in that order, even at the Olympics).

  Home was the one place where I could forget all about the crazy kip — and anything else that got on my nerves. On the weekends, John, Joyelle, and I would climb up into my mother’s linen closet and pull down a pile of bed sheets so we could set up for our favorite activity — making a tent in the living room. We’d use the sofa pillows to hold up the tent’s “walls” (the flat sheets) and then leave just enough of an opening at the front for all three of us to scoot in and camp out overnight.

  “Wanna hear a scary story?” John would ask us, even though we all already knew the answer. After Joy and I had been terrified spitless by my brother’s tale, exhaustion would finally overtake our eyelids. The next morning, Mom would rise early and start breakfast using whatever ingredients were left in the fridge. “Get up, you guys!” she’d yell, as the smell of coffee wafted through our town house. As we lumbered toward the bathroom to brush our teeth, Mom scurried around the kitchen, usually frying eggs and filling her mug with far more French vanilla and caramel creamer than coffee. That’s the way she has always liked her coffee. How sweet is that?

  Even as I did everything I could to conquer my kip, I also continued my TOPs training — remember, that’s the program that puts you on an elite path and allows the national staff at USA Gymnastics to track how well you’re performing over the years. Every summer, TOPs gymnasts are tested on their flexibility and physical abilities. If you nail the state or regional tests by making it into the top percentile of gymnasts around the country, you get a major perk: you’re invited for more testing at the National TOPs training camp in Houston, Texas — the ranch where you get to meet the legendary Márta Károlyi, national coordinator for the US women’s gymnastics team. In addition to strength testing, you also get to perform your gymnastics skills on all four of the apparatuses. The judges score your routines, they add the results of your physical abilities test, and voilà — you just might have a shot at making what’s called the TOPs A or TOPs B team. Every December, the A team is invited back for an all-expense-paid training camp at the Houston ranch. You have to be at least nine to even work your way up to the national camp trip, and since I was just seven when I started TOPs, I was aiming for one of four levels created by USAG for girls under the age of nine — the diamond level, the gold level, the bronze level, and the “Thank you so much for your participation!” level.

  In July 2003, Mom and I drove to Cliffwood, New Jersey, for my first TOPs state testing at Rebound Gymnastics. “I just know you’re going to make the diamond level,” Mom declared. About five of the other girls in my gym program were also there, all of us performing a rigorous series of exercises capable of wiping out even the fittest athlete. And if that isn’t enough to make your stomach do an Arabian double-front layout, there’s also a time clock running, which means you have to get through as many push-ups, pull-ups, leg lifts, and press handstands as you can in, say, sixty seconds. Mom looked on from the balcony as I completed my exercises. After the first six minutes, I could feel the sweat forming on my back.

  Did I make the diamond level? Not exactly. I discovered my results when I received my first official gymnastics prize in the mail: a bronze-level certificate. Ah, man! I wanted that diamond level almost as much as I’d once wanted to find my diamond earring on that playground. But then again, I was pretty grateful just to be recognized — at least I made the bronze level.

  Once I was home from Jersey, it was time to get back to my kip. On Friday nights, there was open gym, a time when we could come to refine our skills or even just play outside of structured training. So Mom brought me to the gym one Friday so that I could keep working on my kip. “Need some help?” one of the higher-level girls asked when she saw me struggling. I nodded. So she and a few of the other gymnasts came over to coach me. By the end of that open gym session, I had mastered the skill! I hate to get all sentimental on you, but I actually got a warm feeling inside when I did my first kip. And here’s a tip for all you aspiring gymnasts: A great kip is all about perfect timing, momentum, and strength.

  My feeling of achievement was only temporarily replaced by a tingling sensation; a huge blister had formed on my palm. Later, when I showed Mom my hand with the blister now ripped wide open, she wailed, “Oooh, that’s gross!” But I was proud of it. Why? Because Coach Dana had once told us this: “Getting a rip is a sign that you’re a real gymnast.”

  So many times in life, we’re faced with a choice: When a task becomes super difficult, will we flip out and quit, or will we stay focused and keep fighting? And then there’s the question I often ask myself: How much will I trust in my Savior to lift me from the low bar to the higher one? The answer often depends on the day, my mood, the season. But every now and then, I actually do rely on God’s strength instead of mine
— and that’s exactly the moment when I become a kipper.

  Chapter Five

  Progress is impossible without change.

  —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, PLAYWRIGHT

  “MY DAUGHTER IS BECOMING STAGNANT.” MOM PEERED STRAIGHT INTO the eyes of the owner of Gymstrada. He didn’t blink. “Gabrielle is frustrated because she’s not learning enough skills,” Mom continued. “She needs more.”

  It was now 2004. After months of training to compete at Level 4, I was winning. A lot. And as much time as my two coaches, Dana and Amanda, spent on helping me refine my skills, I still couldn’t believe how quickly that work was paying off: I grabbed gold at every single one of my six or seven meets that season. That’s when I got my first big sniff of what it meant to train hard, compete even harder, and score victory. So as time marched on, I wasn’t willing to settle for being good enough, or even going home with a medal. I wanted to master the difficult skills that would make me the best. In short, I wanted to rock my sport.

  “I don’t want to give her too much too fast,” the owner finally said to Mom. “That will burn her out early.” Mom accepted that explanation at first — but I didn’t want to hear it. While I was training with the group of other eight-year-olds, out of the corner of my eye, I could see what was happening across the gym. The older girls were already learning a whole set of difficult skills, like a double layout on the floor and round-off back handspring back double back. I knew I was ready to push myself to master those same skills. How did I know it? I just had a strong feeling in my heart — kinda like an intuition.