Caroline Moore, a senior at Cor Jesu Academy, says she always liked being upside down when she was little. So when her mom enrolled her in classes for preschoolers at St. Louis Gym Centre in Webster Groves (where she still trains today), she loved it. Coaches at the gym realized her potential early on, and Moore started competing when she was 5. “I’ve always wanted to get better and learn new skills,” she says. “I love going to meets and competing in front of crowds. It’s an adrenaline rush.”
Gymnastics is a year-round commitment; Moore competes one to two times a month from December to May and continues training in the summer to build muscle and learn new skills. This year, she and her team will travel to Phoenix, Savannah and Minneapolis. Her training schedule of four hours a day, five days a week would be considered grueling for many, but Moore handles it with the mindset of a true athlete. “I’ve been training about 20 hours a week since the seventh grade, so I’m used to it at this point,” she says. “It’s actually helped my time management skills.”
The 17-year-old competes at the highest level at her gym in bar, floor, beam and vault, but admits the vault and beam are her strongest events. She dismisses the difficulty of performing on a beam that’s a mere 4 inches wide. “We practice so much, it just comes second nature to me,” she says.
Moore already has quite the list of accomplishments. She has qualified for State and Regionals every year of high school, and for Westerns (the division that includes half the nation’s top gymnasts compared to Nationals, which covers the entire country) her eighth-grade and freshman years. “I would say sticking with the sport and truly enjoying it for so long is an accomplishment in itself,” she notes. She credits her teammates, coaches and parents for giving her continuous support, which is needed to attain the lofty goals she has set for herself: compete at Nationals and decide on a university where she can continue her passion.