INTRODUCTION
FROM SIMONE BILES
“Come hang out with us.” Those were probably the first words I said to Maggie. We were about fourteen years old and attending one of the national training camps for gymnastics in Houston, Texas. We spent a week there once a month, staying in cabins on a ranch. I had already been to a few of them, but it was Maggie’s first one. The camps can be nerve-racking, because all the gymnasts want to show their best work and want to be invited back to continue training to be on the national team and compete at the World Championships, international competitions, and hopefully the Olympics. I knew how stressful the camps could be, and remembered that at my first one some of the older girls embraced us, took us under their wing, and showed us the ropes. I wanted to do that for Maggie. She and her roommate were a few doors down from me, and I remember going into her room after practice when a bunch of us were hanging out. Maggie was kind of quiet, and I said, “Come hang out with us.” She said, “No, I’m okay. I going to get some rest.” I insisted, begging, and told her it wasn’t going to work for her to be alone in the room. I don’t know why, but I could feel her energy and felt like she was going to be a good friend. So I pulled her away from her shell and made her hang out with us.
Ever since then, we have been best friends. Maggie was very shy in the beginning. And my personality is big and loud (especially when I was younger). I’m always cheering people up and making them laugh, and I think I brought that side out of Maggie. Whenever we were together, we were always laughing. I don’t even remember about what—usually it was over small and silly things. We immediately bonded, because even though our personalities are different, we shared so many other things. We both have dogs and shared our romantic crushes. We talked about everything but gymnastics, from school to boys and other dumb stuff that builds a forever friendship. Getting ready for practice, we were always having a good time, dancing and laughing. We were a good balance for each other. Maggie was so levelheaded in the gym, and she taught me that once we’re in the gym, it’s business first and fun later. And I taught her that once business is over, we could have fun, be goofy, and be fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. And that at the end of the day, gymnastics is what we do, and not who we are—it’s just a part of our lives.
The national gymnastics staff knew Maggie and I were good friends, so if we were assigned to the same competition, we got to room together. We have been through so much together, including winning a World Championships victory as a team. Some people have asked how we can be friends when we were competing against each other, but we never saw it that way. Maggie always said, “I want to vault like you,” so when she trained vault, I would encourage and help her. She’s good at bars and beam and one of the most consistent gymnasts I’ve ever met, and I tried to emulate that. We weren’t competitive and were never jealous of the other; we learned from each other and supported and guided each other.
When Maggie decided to go to University of Oklahoma (OU) and compete at the collegiate level, her success didn’t surprise me, because she was already an amazing gymnast at the elite level, and she got even better, which is crazy because she kept it up for four years. I visited her there and stayed with her. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years, but it was just like old times when we were competing together. We got ice cream and had so much fun. I loved supporting and watching her. She has one of the best collegiate careers I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just saying that because I’m biased as her best friend. She was so poised, consistent, and one of the most beautiful gymnasts to watch. She’s quiet, but a leader. Once she steps into that role, she takes it on fully. She turned things around for gymnastics at OU and will forever be one of their sports legends for what she accomplished there.
We’re adults now and we are both so busy, but we still text to stay in touch. And, when we talk, we always just pick up like no time has passed. That’s what is so special about our friendship—we don’t have to talk every day to know we still support each other. She came to my wedding and supported me, and she’s engaged now, so I’m excited about that. I hope to be there to support her on her big day too—just like we were there for each other on big days in our gymnastics careers. Our accomplishments are different now that we’re older—she graduated from college, I got married and went back to training, and she got engaged and is working now—but we’re just as excited for each other as we were when we won Worlds.
When I was recently deciding whether to return to training after taking some time off, Maggie and I talked about it. And of course she said it was crazy but she supported me 100 percent. She said, “If anybody can do it, it’s you.” I love her for that. We talked about the surgeries she’s had, and how she’s trying to get her knees healthy and start a new chapter in her life as a fitness trainer. Maggie is one of the strongest people I know, and she always showed up for me. I’m going to do the same. That’s what I value so much about our friendship. It’s nice to have a friend like that.
— Simone
CHAPTER ONEDRIVE
It’s not how bad you want it; it’s about how hard you’re willing to work for it.
—ANONYMOUS
I know you’re not supposed to wish for things; you’re supposed to work for them. But when I was a child, I used to ask my parents for spare change every time we went to the Maplewood Mall near our home in Little Canada, Minnesota. I would toss the coins in the fountain, and my wish was always the same. My one true desire was to compete in the Olympics someday. I wanted to represent the United States as an elite-level gymnast.
I remember watching Carly Patterson, the all-around champion, on TV during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. I rushed outside during commercial breaks to “try” all the flips she was flawlessly executing. We had this big square patch of grass with slightly curved corners in our front yard that always looked to me like a floor exercise. I ran toward it as fast as I could and did some of my best skills at the time. I began with a round-off back handspring back tuck, imagining that I was doing what Carly did on her first pass. Then I improvised some more, doing a front handspring front tuck as if it was just like her other pass. I followed that by a few leaps and some dancing. When the competition resumed on television, my mom called me back inside. I was only six years old, but I knew then that I wanted to do exactly what Carly was doing someday.
It was a big dream for sure, but it wasn’t an unrealistic one. I really believe that I was born to do gymnastics. When I was a baby, my parents couldn’t keep me in my crib. I would climb out of it every night and end up in their bedroom. The next morning, they would wonder, How did she get in here? She can’t even walk! By the time I was a toddler, I was tumbling on the couch cushions and leaping over the backyard fence. I can’t explain it. It’s just what I did.
When I was three years old, my parents decided to put me in a local gymnastics class in Roseville, Minnesota. They thought I’d be safer if I learned some basic techniques. They brought my brother Danny along as well, but he didn’t last too long. He was too much of a playful distraction for me, and the coaches suspected by then that if I gave gymnastics my focus, great things could come of it.
My parents, and my older brothers, Steve, Sam, and Danny, are all athletic. The boys played baseball, basketball, football, and lacrosse. My dad played every sport imaginable in his youth, and my mom was into high school gymnastics. They’re still very active today, so I suppose it was just in my genes.
I guess you could say I was naughty in the gym. I definitely listened to the coaches. I did whatever they asked me to do and made every correction I was given, but I would skip the line all the time so I could take more turns than the other girls. All that extra practice was how I got good at doing back handsprings before everyone else my age. When the coaches saw me always angling to have another try, they could just tell that I really wanted to be a top gymnast.
The USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic program, which my Roseville gym and so many other gyms throughout the nation were a part of, and which is now called the USAG Development Program, is divided into Levels 1 through 10. Levels 1 through 3 are for beginners, Levels 4 through 6 are for advanced gymnasts, and Levels 7 through 10 are the most competitive. When gymnasts have been competing at Level 10 for a while, they may pursue opportunities to qualify for elite-level gymnastics.
LEVELING UP
Curious about which skills are required at each level of the Development Program? Check out https://gymnasticshq.com/gymnastics-levels/ for a comprehensive and up-to- date guide!
And if you don’t recognize some of the skills mentioned there, the glossary of gymnastics terms found here of this book will define them for you.
When I was six years old, I was in Level 5 with the other girls my age. But the coaches observed that I had a lot more power and was developing skills faster than the rest of the group, so they began training me to do Level 7 skills. On bars, for instance, I was working on incorporating a giant into my routine, which is a really difficult skill for a lot of people to learn. It’s where you rotate 360 degrees around one of the bars with your body in a fully extended position. On beam, you had to be able to do a series such as a back walkover, back walkover or a back walkover, back handspring. My beam series for Level 7 was actually a step up from that. It included a back handspring, back handspring, which was considered a very impressive series for that level. I was flipping backward twice in a row, touching my hands to the beam midway through each flip.
* * *
Most days, before practice, my friends were on the other side of the gym jumping around on the trampoline while I was doing extra workouts by myself. I felt like I was missing out on some of the fun. It was the first time I got a sense of the sacrifices I would have to make to be successful. I wanted to be with them, but I wanted to learn Level 7 more.
Around that same time, the coaches pulled my parents aside and suggested that I move to another gym, which was known for developing athletes who competed quite successfully at the Junior Olympics, the highest competition in the developmental program. The gym they suggested was Twin City Twisters (also called TCT) in Champlin, Minnesota. TCT had an amazing reputation, and my parents believed that the coaches there could help me fulfill my potential. The one catch was that this new gym was a forty-minute drive from my home. We decided to make the leap anyway.
Once we had the perfect gym, we had to find the perfect school. The one I was enrolled in finished at four o’clock each day, but I needed to find one that ended earlier because practice initially ran from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. during the school year and from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. during the summer, with hours added as I got more advanced.
Luckily, by the time I was in second grade, we found that school (shout-out to Parkview Center School!). Their day ended at two, but I was permitted to leave after lunch at one. The only snag with Parkview was that when the time ultimately came, they would not allow me to take off to compete on behalf of the United States at international events. So we looked for a loophole. Apparently, you could be absent from school for family reunions … Let’s just say I had a lot of “family get-togethers.”
Eventually, I had to take online courses to make up for the classes I missed, and there was no real opportunity to make new friends there, but I was happy in the gym and that was all that mattered to me.
I remember my first day at TCT like it was yesterday. My mom got lost on the way there, so we were late to practice. As we pulled into the parking lot, the girls were already taking a morning run around the pond. I didn’t have tennis shoes, but that didn’t stop me from racing out of the car and joining them barefoot. I’m pretty sure I came in first. The coaches had to be thinking, This girl really wants to be here! And I did. All my loved ones knew it, and they literally went the extra mile to make it happen. Since my parents worked during the day, my aunt would pick me up from school in the afternoon to get me to practice on time. When she wasn’t available, I’d carpool, or my parents would hire a driver (usually a friend of the family or a relative, but always someone we knew well). Once my brothers got their licenses, they would take me.
In the evenings, it was my parents’ turn to pick me up. They would make sure I did my homework during the car ride home and while I waited for them to prepare dinner. Then I’d eat, relax a little, and be in bed by nine o’clock. Even the school bus driver did his part. We lived on a cul-de-sac at the end of a long road, and I can’t count the number of times he waited a little longer for me to make it up that street each morning by seven so I could repeat the cycle of school, practice, and sleep all over again.
Copyright © 2024 by Maggie Nichols
