14 years ago, a hyper little girl was put into gymnastics by her mom and has fallen in love with it ever since. Since she was four years old gymnastics has been a part of Madelyn Martell’s (12) life and has taught her important life lessons as well as helping her find her passion for her future career.

“I just love doing flips, being with the team, and everything about it. There’s nothing I don’t really like about it,” Martell said. “I like to complete challenges I make in my head and I always want to do my best in everything I try and gymnastics is a really good sport to do that in.”

Having been in gymnastics so long, Martell has made multiple achievements and this season specifically was able to win all around for her first time. She also has goals to get the beam record and hopes to win state in something this year.

“For the all around record, I just trained really hard over the summer and coming in again. I had ankle injuries so I had to work really hard to fix that and get through it,” Martell said. “How I want to achieve breaking the record for beam and hopefully getting us a title on my own is just with hard work and consistency.”

Martell was not able to reach these goals without obstacles as she snapped her ATFL ligament and got a severe concussion. This required surgery which put her out of gymnastics for practically a year and took a lot of physical therapy and brought up some mental obstacles as well.

“I like the challenge of it and everything but there have been mental blocks like getting scared of doing something again telling myself ‘What if I get hurt again?’” Martell said. “Gymnastics is just a hard sport in general, with mental obstacles, and that’s kind of what makes it interesting though.”

  Martells injuries helped introduce her to the world of pediatrics because of the nurses and doctors that have assisted her with her gymnastic related injuries. She now wants to go to college for nursing, specifically pediatrics.

“Every time I’ve been injured and been in the hospital for it, the nurses were always there and they were really sweet and helpful,” Martell said. “It made me want to be a nurse even more because I want to help people who were in those situations and calm them down.”

Though still looking for a specific school, Martell hopes to continue gymnastics in college and even hopefully past college in some way. Though it’s been 14 years, Martell still has a passion for her sport.