At the age of four, I fell in love with the sport of gymnastics! Once a week I went to a small school where we did forward rolls and backbends and it was the highlight of my week. At this age, it was all about having fun. No one cared if our hair was crazy or our underwear was hanging out because we were having fun!

I then went to my elementary school and went to gymnastics lessons. Nothing could have been better. My role models were going to be my coaches, the high school gymnasts! They were perfect and always found a positive with a negative. This was the second lesson I learned about life at just the age of eight: always find a positive.

I rejoined gymnastics in high school and I know 100% that was the best decision I ever made.

This is where I found my true passion for gymnastics. I learned so much in high school through gymnastics that I was able to take into the real world. If you want something bad enough you have to work for it. If you want that new skill on beam, you can achieve it — you just might have to do it 100 times before you will get it. I then learned you can't give up! Even though you compete as an individual you also compete as a team and you can't let them down. Help others! It doesn't matter if your teammate might be better than you, you are teammates and want everyone to succeed. Sometimes, gymnastics can go from having fun to worrying about the color of your medal. I was able to not worry so much about that and focus on myself and my team and just have fun.

I gained some of the most important people in my life from gymnastics!

My coaches are the reason I was the gymnast I was, they never gave up on me. I'm still very close to them even if I can't compete anymore. My team also loved watching and cheering on other gymnasts competing. This is how I learned sportsmanship. It doesn't matter if you lose or win, you should cheer on each other because we are all here because we love gymnastics and want to have fun. So thank you to all of the other gymnastics teams that I was able to learn from. Thank you to my teammates for all of the laughs, hugs, high fives and everything else you did for me. Lastly, thank you to my mom and dad. Thank you for allowing me to fall in love with a sport at age four and supporting me through it all!

I'm now very thankful that I get to coach gymnastics and teach others these life lessons.