Gymdawg Madison Copiak is living a dream

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. T

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, BY BRIAN BEAKY EDITOR • GOHUSKIES MAGAZINE

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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skating, tennis, etc.) are often portrayed in popular media, Copiak says that the atmosphere among her fellow competitors was generally congenial. After all, there were so few girls competing at her level that they'd see the same group at every meet — they might as well get along.

"The gymnastics world in Canada is fairly small, so we were a tight-knit group of girls," she says. "It was definitely competitive, but we were all friendly."

The world was opening up. National Championships were certainly within reach — maybe even a spot on a future Olympic team, if she continued to train and fine-tune her routines. In 2011, though, at age 13, it all came crashing down — literally. A labral tear in her hip kept Copiak off the mat for months; eventually, the decision was made to undergo surgery. The recovery? Two years. For a competitor who had never spent more than a few months away from the gym in nearly a decade, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

"It was hard," she says. "It definitely challenged me mentally."

To keep her spirits up, Copiak took on a mentor role at her local gym, shifting her passion for the sport from her own training and development, into those of her teammates and the younger girls who looked up to her. On a daily basis, she'd undergo grueling rehabilitation for her hip, then push the pain deep inside and head over to the Calgary Gymnastics Centre to pour positive energy and enthusiasm into her teammates. If she hadn't, she says, she might not have made it through.

"The day after surgery, I came in and was there helping coach the girls, and doing my own conditioning," she recalls. "Being in the environment helped me keep my love for gymnastics. Later, when I came back, I had an appreciation for being healthy and able to compete. A lot of gymnasts burn out, and I think those years helped me remain steady and get to where I am now.

"In the long run, I think the break was actually kind of helpful for me." It's no secret that female gymnasts typically peak in their mid-to-late teens. By 16 — an age when she should have been at her best, with two years to build towards the 2016 Summer Olympics — Copiak was instead just returning from two years away from competition. Two years to lose that razorsharp edge, to develop new habits and routines. Two years away from your sport is difficult for any athlete to come back from. For a competitive gymnast, in her mid-teens? It's a lifetime.

Copiak had tasted at a young age what life without gymnastics felt like, though. She wasn't ready to step away again.

Instead, Copiak threw herself back into her training, putting in the extra hours of work she knew it would take to get herself back to the level at which she had been performing before the injury. Then, she pushed herself even farther. In 2014 — just months after her return from injury — Copiak was back competing for Team Canada internationally. In 2015, she finished in the topfive on bars, beam, floor and all-around at the 2015 Canadian Championships, and represented Team Canada at the World Championships and Pan-American Games. The following year, the national team coaches offered her the chance to compete for a spot on the squad that would represent Team Canada at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

For any gymnast, the opportunity was a dream come true. For Copiak, it was a dream she had already largely let go.

"That's something that I never really expected to happen," she says, "especially after my injury. But, the coaches saw me compete at Nationals, and gave me the opportunity. Each time I competed internationally, I gained experience and my scores improved, and I started to realize, 'This is really something I can do.' It encouraged me to set higher goals for myself than I had been setting before."

Copiak made the team as an alternate, and trained daily with the squad right up until it left for Rio, preparing herself to be ready if needed. She wasn't. It was OK.

“I was happy being an alternate, because that’s still an important role,” Copiak said in a 2018 interview with UW's The Daily. "I still went to the training camp, I still pushed people, and pushed lineups. I showed up and that made everyone else push themselves."

"Looking back on [my international experience] now, it's crazy how young I was, and how much I've grown since then," she added. "That was a lot of fun. I had a lot of really unique opportunities; I got to travel to a whole bunch of places. It was an awesome experience."

Just as Copiak had proven herself to Team Canada's coaches, so, too, had her quick return from injury caught the eye of Joanne Bowers, then head

coach at the University of Washington. When Bowers called Copiak in 2015 to offer her a spot in the Huskies' 2016-17 freshman class, it took her all of two seconds to say yes.

"I was ecstatic," she says. "It was my first season back, and for a little bit, I had thought that I wasn't going to do college gymnastics, which had been my biggest goal. So, to get that call was so exciting."

Over the course of her three-plus years at Washington, Copiak has developed into one of the Huskies' leaders both inside and outside of competition. After earning second-team NACGC All-America honors on bars as a freshman with a score of 9.850 at the NCAA Championships, Copiak competed in three events at nationals the following year (the only one she does not regularly compete on is floor, then upped her scores consistently as a junior, winning eight event titles. Against UC Davis, she swept titles on bars, beam and vault, her score of 9.975 on bars the highest by a Husky in 15 years. She has also developed a new perspective on the sport she's loved for nearly all her life.

"If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have told you that gymnastics is an individual sport, but it's so much more rewarding as a team sport," she says. "I've never met a group of more humble, caring and selfless young women. When you're on a college team, you're doing it for something that's bigger than you. You have automatic best friends that are there for you in good or bad, and push you towards your goals. It's a unique experience that has made me a better person."

Entering the 2019-20 season, Copiak was elected captain by her teammates, a role she says that, as a generally quiet leader, she never expected to fill. It's emblematic, though, of her growth as a person over the last four years — from a shy teenager venturing out of her comfort zone to a new country, a new school and a new team, to a well-rounded young woman who is looked up to by her teammates, and ready to face whatever challenges come next.

A speech and hearing sciences major at UW, Copiak spends her free time in the research lab or working with patients in the community, helping to develop their speech and language skills. It's an appropriate career choice for a student-athlete who notes that her time at Washington — especially her teammates, coaches and peers — helped her find her own voice.

"I have grown tremendously," she says. "I came in as a pretty quiet, timid freshman that wasn't great at communicating or self-advocating, and never expected to see myself in a leadership position. Now, here I am as a senior, being a co-captain and being able to stand up for myself. I have more confidence than I have had during my entire gymnastics career, just in who I am as a person, and who I am as a gymnast, and a student. It's a unique transition that everyone goes through as they enter and exit college. "It's so cool to look back and see how much I've changed."

t some point in April — hopefully at the NCAA Championships in Fort Worth — when the judges post her final score, gymnastics will be taken away from Madison Copiak for the third time. College gymnastics is, in Copiak's own words, "the last stop" for most competitive gymnasts, at least those who are not pursuing their dreams on the elite level, a path not often followed in conjunction with a college education. Thus, when Copiak steps off the mat for the final time this spring, that will be it. The end of nearly 20 years of hard work, intense physical and mental training, and unwavering commitment to her goals.

When she stepped away the sport for the first time in 2004, she was filled with regret. When she had it taken away by injury in 2011, she was crushed. This time, she's ready. There's no reason to look back, after all, when one has so much to look forward to. A