Anya Tumbles in Texas

Anya is pictured here in Texas with Bela Karolyi, former coach of the women's US Olympic Gymnastics Team, and director of the women's US Olympic Gymnastics Training Center--also known as the Karolyi Ranch.

Nearly 3000 female gymnasts ages 7-11 train hard and then qualify from their gyms to test annually, over the summer, at Regional testing centers across the country where they are evaluated for their physical abilities, conditioning and flexibility. This program is called TOPs and is intended to identify potential future elite gymnasts. Only the top 300 of these girls are selected to test again in Texas, at the Karolyi ranch, where coaches from the US Olympic Gymnastics Team evaluate those abilities again, plus a range of advanced gymnastics skills. The top 20 from the 9, 10, and 11 year old age groups are then selected to return to the Karolyi Ranch, all expenses paid by US Gymnastics, for a week long camp in December. The next 20 kids are invited to the "B" camp (at their expense).

Anya was honored and thrilled to have been among those 300 girls to make it to the testing in Texas. She and I (Lisa) traveled last weekend with two teammates from her gym, and two former teammates from a neigboring gym. It was a wonderful trip. Being in the company of so many truly awesome gymnasts was an incredible inspiration and Anya is "still floating." She knew she didn't have a shot at "A Camp" but "B Camp" was within her reach. She did great. The cut-off score was 79--her score was 77.9 so she missed "B Camp" by just over a point. (And one of her younger teammates made it to A camp!) She's disappointed not to have the camp opportunity (she lives and breathes for gymnastics) but amazingly, she is already motivated to begin that long training path toward next year's National Testing. We're so proud of her.