The room is silent as junior Gracie Dunn waits to salute the judges before competing beam at the Cupid Classic on Feb. 14. In these quiet moments before the competition, she visualises her routine in her head, feels the dryness of the chalk on her hands and takes deep breaths to clear her anxiety. Once she starts, her teammates and coaches are heard cheering as she executed her routine. Dunn received third place for this routine, with a score of 9.15.
Dunn fractured her back twice, once in February of 2024 and again in October 2024, while sophomore Charlie Gutierrez and junior Ellie Flournoy also faced a recent pause in their high school gymnastics careers due to injury.
“This was actually my first year competing after being out for 15 months, and missing two whole seasons of competing, so it was kind of challenging to get back into the routine of things,” Dunn said.
For KC Fuzion, Dunn and Flournoy’s gymnastics team, the postseason started March 20. This means a return to State, then regionals and finally nationals for the girls if they qualify. Gutierrez attends Liberty Gymnastics Academy, and the team was also making its way into the postseason.
“Coming back from my injury was my biggest mental struggle this year,” Flournoy said.
Dunn suffered an overuse injury, called spondylolysis, in her L5 vertebrae, which is quite common in gymnasts. When it first happened, she was told she had to stop gymnastics completely and start physical therapy. Once she got cleared to practice again, she reaggravated it and ended up getting cleared from that injury in May of 2025.
According to Children’s Hospital Colorado, “In addition to nutritional and hormonal factors, most gymnasts are involved in intense year-round training, which can lead to injuries (particularly overuse injuries that are often unique to gymnastics).”
Gymnastics is deemed to be a dangerous sport, and safety protocols must be enforced in gyms. In fact, the U.S. Center for SafeSport temporarily suspended the Blue Springs gym, Great American Gymnastics Express, for disciplinary misconduct in February of this year.
“My favourite skill is a Yurchenko, which is a round off onto a springboard, and then a back handspring over the vault table, and then a flip off,” Dunn said.
Dunn is a level 10 gymnast whose favourite event is beam, and even got fourth on the event at regionals 2024, which was the last postseason competition she participated in. Dunn leaves school each day after fifth hour, Monday through Thursday, to practice from 1:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m. This requires her to take two online classes a semester. On the weekends, she practices on Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
“I really want to get a scholarship to do it in college. I have one more year of club, so hopefully, I’ll get my skills good enough to be recruited.” Dunn said.
For the future, Flournoy doesn’t know if she wants to continue gymnastics in college, but if she doesn’t, she may go out for cheerleading. She does know she wants to go into the medical field to be an orthopaedic surgeon to help other injured athletes, and may shadow Dr Vopat at KU Hospital, who did her knee surgery, who has also worked with Patrick Mahomes.
“The future of gymnastics for me is hopefully getting to level ten next year, but my goals for this year are to qualify for regionals at state,” Gutierrez said.
For those interested in joining gymnastics, a good place to start is an open tumbling clinic or finding a gym and trying out, which Liberty Gymnastics Academy offers on Tuesdays from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. They use a punch-card system that has four uses for 65 dollars. To watch, every Friday night, the NCAA broadcasts women’s college-level gymnastics on ESPN.
