Flying takes hard work

By Cathy Spaulding
Times Staff Writer

April 16, 2008 05:23 pm

— Three Fort Gibson girls and their friends are on their way to state gymnastics meet in Bartlesville next month after flipping, vaulting, balancing and reaching their way through a sectional meet earlier this month.
Leslie White, Anna White and Lacey Gotcher belong to a 10-member competitive gymnastics team from Oklahoma Gymnastics Academy in Muskogee. The team, which consists of three intermediate competition levels, competed in Eastern Oklahoma Sectional competition April 5 in Claremore and will join their teammates at the state meet May 3 and 4 in Bartlesville.
Team members practiced three hours each afternoon, four days a week, said their coach, Kara Schell.
“They learn their routines through the summer and from summer to December they practice and perfect their routines,” Schell said.
The girls do compulsory competition in vault, bars, balance beam and floor exercises.
Each Fort Gibson gymnast has her own favorite event — and her own specialty.
Leslie said she likes the floor exercise best.
“I think it’s because I like tumbling,” the sixth-grader said. “You do tumbling and dance to a specific music routine that has different sets of music.”
She said the most challenging event is the uneven bars, in which she has to jump and flip between a lower and upper bar.
However, little sister Anna, a fourth-grader, said she likes the bars best and does the best at the bars.
Anna said she’s been doing gymnastics since she was about 6 years old, “probably because we didn’t want to do anything else.”
The girls’ mother, Katrina White, said she takes her daughters to practice right after school Mondays through Thursdays.
“We go directly from Fort Gibson school to here and we’re home at 7:30,” she said. “They do their homework, eat, go to bed.”
Like the other girls on the team, the White sisters must make good grades.
“My girls have to have straight As or they can’t compete,” White said. “I sit down and help them if I feel they need it.”
The mother knows how much the girls get into the sport.
“If they miss a couple of days, you get cartwheels and handstands in your face at hour house,” she said.
Laurie Gotcher said her daughter, Lacey Gotcher, “loves to compete.”
“She used to be in beauty pageants,” the mother said.
She said Lacey is careful about what she eats.
“At one point, she wanted to be a vegetarian,” Gotcher said. “We haven’t gotten there yet.”
At the start of each practice the girls “do a lot of conditioning and stretching,” Gotcher said. “Then they do their routines.”
Gotcher said Lacey’s best event is the vault.
However, Lacey said “the balance beam is the one I get the best scores in.”
“I have to learn to stay stiff,” she said.
A newcomer to competitive gymnastics, Lacey said she’s been competing for a year, but got involved in gymnastics through Fort Gibson’s community education program two years ago.
Schell, a former competitive gymnast, said the girls must be disciplined and dedicated. The discipline often shows in other areas.
“Most of our gymnasts are straight-A students,” she said. “They’re all very disciplined. Gymnastics teaches discipline, dedication and time management, the whole package. Desire, dedication and discipline: I like to say they’re the three D’s.”
Reach Cathy Spaulding at 684-2928 or cspaulding@muskogeephoenix.com.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.