Medal-winning performances inspire Utah's young gymnasts

Gymnastics training schools are seeing a surge in enrollment and expecting more after last night's American gold and silver medals in the women's all-around competition. Many young Utahns are now hoping to grow up and be just like Shawn Johnson and Nastia Luikin.

Supercharged excitement and renewed enthusiasm came with the students to at least one gym today. They were truly inspired by what they watched in Olympic competition last night.

Madison Nilson, age 10, says she'd like to compete in the Olympics some day "because then you'll be in the top of the world, and that's a big jump, and that'd be really cool."

Enrollment for gymnastics classes have steadily increased this summer, and fall will be even better, say the trainers and coaches. Young gymnasts start at one gym we found when they're as young as 2 years old.

Lindsay Trapp, a compulsory coach at Gymnastics Training Center, said, "I'm doing a class, right, and just the little kids, I asked them if they watched the Olympics last night. They're like ‘Yeah, we're gonna be just like them, we're gonna follow in their footsteps.' They're cute, everyone wants to be like Shawn Johnson."

Haile Hoffman, age 12, said, "I was excited for the next day so I could come to gym and work even harder."

Because they understand all aspect of this sport, some of them were not very happy about the judges' scores last night.

Miranda Rougelot, age 10, said, "Some of the scores were fair and some of them were, they got robbed."

Andrea Heiner, age 13, said, "I thought most of the scores were fair. I thought some of them might have been a little bit low."

But the gymnasts remain undaunted, saying they will do whatever it takes to someday fly into Olympic competition just like the women of Team USA 2008.

Instructors at the Training Center also credit the highly-successful University of Utah Women's Gymnastics team with inspiring their students.

E-mail: cmikita@ksl.com

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