Liberty Andrews is 9-years-old. Young in life, but not in the world of gymnastics where the basics are taught as young as preschool age. And by the time you’re a teenager, you’re a wily veteran.
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“By nine-or-ten years-old you’ve got to be doing some big gymnastics already,” explained her coach Cash McGowan. Because it takes a long time to master the amount of difficulty you need to be competitive at the Olympic level.”
Liberty is already showing that promise. At this year’s Missouri State Championships in St. Louis, she won her third consecutive state title with the second-highest all-around score among 659 Show-Me State gymnasts at various levels. And in a country with almost four-million participants in the sport, she’s ranked in the top 100.
Training alongside five other state champions at the Gold Medal Gym in Republic, all these young ladies must be dedicated and put in thousands of hours per year. And Liberty’s days are even longer because her home is a two-hour round-trip away.
”I drive from Joplin to here five days a week,” she said.
“She has two other sisters and they also play sports,” adds her mom April. “We sacrifice a lot, myself in general because I’m bringing her here so I miss out on a lot of their sports. You practice year-round, and it takes a lot more dedication and work than softball which only lasts a couple of months.”
The day-after-day repetition and physical grind aren’t the only sacrifices these athletes make. Like the food they eat.
“I talk to them all the time,” McGowan said. “Telling them that they have these Ferrari bodies and not to put sugar in the gas tank. Put good food in the gas tanks.”
And they also don’t get to spend a lot of time with their friends.
“That’s starting to sink in that she’s not going to be able to go to the school carnival or be able to go to other activities because she has gymnastics,” April said.
To Liberty, though, it’s not a drudgery.
“To me I have fun doing it,” she said with a smile.
Which is the kind of attitude you have to have to survive the grueling life of a gymnast.
“There can’t be a lot of fear,” McGowan explained. “There has to be a lot of determination. They may want it at first and as it gets tougher, they’re gonna have to have a lot of drive to push through the rough times because they’ll be a lot of those.”
Even though only five girls every four years get chosen out of the thousands of elite competitors for gymnastics top American honor, Liberty’s goal has not changed.
“Go to the Olympics,” she said.
“If not definitely a college scholarship,” her mom adds. “We just keep reminding her that this is her dream and to keep pushing and it will pay-off in the end.”
