Spotlight of the Week: Leila Gatmaitan

“I like gymnastics because it’s like we’re one big family of gymnasts.” Leila Gatmaitan is an amazing 7th-grade gymnast. She has been doing gymnastics for almost her whole life. “It is an amazing sport and I think that it [the sport] is often overlooked.”

Leila’s favorite event in gymnastics is the bars, “I like bars because I like the feeling of dismounting and being in the air.” She loves her sport so much and would love to share more about it.

Leila shared that her favorite trick is a giant, “A giant is where your on bars and you basically just swing around a bunch of times and then you dismount off.”
Sometimes people wonder why someone would choose their sport over all other sports out there, Leila shared, “My mom put me in gymnastics when I was two and I just kind of fell in love with it.”

Leila also shared that she is currently working on her floor routine. “Floor is kind of like a dance but we focus more on tricks than turns, leaps, or jumps. We still do those things, but there are just fewer of them compared to how many people would do in dance.”