A positive mindset: we hear about it, we want it, but how do we achieve it?
A sport like gymnastics is as much mental as it is physical, and learning how to be as strong mentally as you are on the competition floor is one of the more difficult parts of the sport. Add in the additional challenge of a season or even career-ending injury, and you get some of the toughest athletes you will ever meet.
Since 2022, there have been 476 injuries across all divisions submitted to our injury update tracker that have kept athletes out for a majority or the entirety of the season. Remarkably, many of these athletes have come back even stronger to finish out their collegiate careers. Of these 476, there have been stories filled with gratitude and joy when athletes return to the sport they have always loved, as well as a new and improved mindset for the opportunity they have been given for a second time around.
Chloe Negrete, current sixth year at N.C. State, is just one of the many athletes who has come back to the sport with a newfound love and appreciation for her final years as a collegiate gymnast. While training on floor only a handful of days before the first meet of her junior season, Negrete sustained a devastating Achilles rupture. “I had no Achilles problems leading up…
