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| Charlotte Drury competes at 2014 USA Gymnastics Championships on July 19, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky. |
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Charlotte Drury is a trampoline convert.
Growing up in Southern California, Drury was all about artistic gymnastics — the well-known gymnastics with the balance beam, vault, uneven bars and floor exercise. She started the sport at age 5, and some of her early gym buddies were Kyla Ross and McKayla Maroney.
Of course, Ross and Maroney went on to help Team USA win a gold medal in artistic gymnastics at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Drury, on the other hand, switched at age 13 to another gymnastics discipline: trampoline.
“I really got burned out of artistic gymnastics,” said Drury, 18, who is still good friends with Ross and Maroney. “I didn’t have that passion for it anymore. It was time to move on in my life, and that very same day I found trampoline and immediately I knew this was where I was supposed to be.”
That new discipline hasn’t led Drury to the Olympic Games yet — she said she hopes to join Ross and Maroney on Team USA in 2016 — but she’s competed on just about every other level. This weekend, Drury is one of 17 U.S. athletes competing in the World Trampoline and Tumbling Championships at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The event runs from Friday to Sunday, with event finals in individual trampoline, double-mini trampoline, synchronized trampoline and tumbling taking place on Saturday and Sunday. Of the four events, only individual trampoline — a sport in which athletes reach heights as high as 30 feet — is on the Olympic program, having been added to the Games in 2000. Each athlete completes a 30-second routine that includes 10 consecutive skills. The routines are judged on execution of skills and degree of difficulty.
“I love the flying, the lack of gravity,” said Drury, a student at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, California. “It’s just sooo fun. Every single day I walk into the gym, I can’t wait to get on the trampoline.”
Through four Olympic Games, China has been the leader in the sport, having won eight medals (including four of the six awarded in 2012). Other nations such as Canada and Russia have shined on the Olympic stage as well.
Meanwhile, the United States is working to climb up that ladder.
In 2012, Savannah Vinsant became the first American to make the event finals at the Olympic Games and eventually finished sixth. Two years later, Nicole Ahsinger finished fifth at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
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| Loogan Dooley competes at 2014 USA Gymnastics Championships on July 18, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky. |
One year later, U.S. gymnast Logan Dooley finished seventh at the 2013 world championships, becoming the first American male to make a world championships final in individual trampoline in 33 years.
And already this year, Drury made history when she became the first U.S. woman to win a world cup event in September.
Drury and Dooley headline the U.S. team at the world championships. Dooley joins Jeffrey Gluckstein, Neil Gulati and Aliaksei Shostak on the U.S. men’s trampoline team, while Shaylee Dunavin and Clare Johnson join Drury on the women’s team.
That U.S. success, combined with more visibility from events such as the one this weekend, have helped trampoline gymnastics begin to step out of the shadow of artistic gymnastics, said Susan Jacobson, the program director of trampoline and tumbling for USA Gymnastics.
“In the last Olympics, NBC televised part of the trampoline program, which was huge,” Jacobson said. “We’re consistently climbing the ranks. We have just under 10,000 kids in the U.S. competing now. Kids love trampoline.”
That wasn’t the case when Dooley started the sport on his backyard trampoline at age 7. His parents signed him up for lessons, but didn’t think much else about it.
“My parents didn’t even know it was a real sport,” said Dooley, the top-ranked American in men’s individual trampoline. “One day (coach Robert Null said), ‘Oh how about we compete?’ And my parents were like, ‘Compete? What is a trampoline competition?’”
He’s since risen in the sport. The Lake Forest, California, resident was an Olympic alternate in 2008 and 2012. And in 2010, he teamed with Gluckstein on a synchronized team to become the first Americans to win a world cup series title.
“This is first time in my career that we’ve had a big international meet in the United States,” he said. “It’s very exciting to be here on home soil in front of Americans and getting to do what I love.”
Brent Woronoff is a sportswriter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal. He is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.