No
Regrets BY BRIAN BEAKY EDITOR • GOHUSKIES MAGAZINE
T
hree times in her life, Madison Copiak has had
gymnastics taken away from her. First, by choice. Second, by injury. Third ... well, we'll get to that.
Copiak estimates that she was about six years old the first time she stepped away from the sport. Just barely old enough to read, she had already been flipping, turning and tumbling competitively for two years prior, before deciding that she'd rather join her primary school friends on the soccer field instead. It took stepping away, though, for Copiak to realize what she was giving up. She promptly returned to the gym at the end of soccer season,
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and vowed not to walk away from her sport of choice again. Upon her return, she was placed in a recreational gymnastics class, the ones where kids — some coordinated, some very much not — learn to do somersaults, cartwheel into foam pits, hop through hula hoops and generally goof around. "The first day, I was like, 'Oh, no, this is not going to work," the Husky senior recalls. "So, they put me into the competitive program and it was much better." Over the next several years, Copiak established herself as one of Alberta's top young competitive gymnasts, training year-round, competing for provincial championships and becoming one of just a handful of youth gymnasts to earn a gold LEAP badge, requiring months of hard work. Unlike the way competitive individual youth sports (think figure
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