Schmidt’s return to gymnastics gives Lake Forest a big lift
by bill mclean Contributor January 17, 2012 9:44PM
Lake Forest's Carly Schmidt competes on the balance beam at Saturday's Lake County Meet. | Joel Lerner~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: February 20, 2012 8:18AM
Carly Schmidt got back together with an old, dear friend earlier this winter: gymnastics.
The Lake Forest High School junior broke up with the sport three years ago. It had been, since her really early years, a constant in her life.
Wake up, eat, go to school, spend four hours on mats, eat, go to bed.
Repeat the next day.
“The hardest decision I’d ever made,” recalled Schmidt of leaving the grueling, challenging sport as a seventh-grader. “My dream, for years, was to compete in the Olympics as a gymnast.”
Mental stress, with fractures on the side (she broke both feet, in separate incidents), had something to do with her decision.
“It got to the point where I didn’t enjoy it anymore,” she added.
Schmidt, as an eighth-grader at Deer Path Middle School, found track and field, thanks to PE teacher/coach Jim Troemel, who’d marveled at Schmidt’s sheer athleticism in class.
Troemel figured Schmidt and pole vaulting would be a good fit.
But Deer Path didn’t have a vault pit.
LFHS did.
“We’d drive there to practice,” Schmidt said.
After only two practices, Schmidt, pole in hands, found herself competing at a state meet. She’s not sure where she placed at the meet. But she was certain of something: She fell for pole vaulting. Hard.
“I loved it right away,” she said. “My gymnastics background helped me, a lot, when I started pole vaulting. You need to have that awareness in the air; I was thankful I had that.”
Schmidt, as a freshman, had a hankering to get airborne as a cheerleader in the fall and winter seasons. So she did that, before making the school’s varsity track and field team in the spring.
It didn’t take long for Schmidt to stand out as a pole vaulter. She tied for 12th place (10-feet-6) at her first Class 3A IHSA state track and field meet. Last spring, as a sophomore, she took fifth (11-9), three spots behind teammate and school-record holder Carolina Carmichael, then a junior who cleared 12-3 in Charleston.
The school’s gymnastics team, meanwhile, was still basking as the state runner-up, a feat it had accomplished some three months earlier. Many of its members train as club members at Gurnee-based Ultimate Gymnastics — Schmidt’s club back in her grade-school days.
Before the start of her junior year, Schmidt was ready to return to gymnastics. She informed Scouts gymnastics coach Robin Straus, who had lost state teamers Grace Kohlmaier and Mel Foster to graduation.
Straus, no doubt, beamed at the thought of watching the 5-foot-7 Schmidt perform for her Scouts.
But Schmidt, who cheered again during the football season, didn’t make her return to gymnastics official until late fall, on the first day of open gym at LFHS.
“We didn’t corner her and pressure her to come out for gymnastics,” said Scouts sophomore Brittany Moccia, one of LF’s three elite all-arounders (the others are juniors Kylie Carlson and Kat McKeon).
“We all just tried to have a positive influence on her. We told her it would be a great experience for her.”
The pole vaulter’s best event?
Vault, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
Schmidt has been executing a tuck Tsuk, with a plan to upgrade the vault to a pike Tsuk for either the NSC Meet (Jan. 27) or the start of the state series.
“Her vault, right now, is not a particularly difficult one, but it’s a big vault because of the way she performs it,” Straus said. “When you see it, you can’t help but say, ‘Wow.’ ”
She has landed a 9.45 vault twice this winter.
Wow, wow.
Schmidt landed in South Carolina last month — to pole vault at a camp, for the third straight winter. Each Sunday, during gymnastics season, she hones her pole-vault craft in Milwaukee. On Saturdays, when Straus’ crew doesn’t compete, Schmidt heads to Indiana to sprint, plant pole and soar some more.
“I’m so glad I’m back as a gymnast,” said Schmidt, whose current athletic dream is to pole vault in college. “I love it; I love being a part of the team. Vault and floor (exercise) … I was able to get comfortable on those events fairly quickly. The others (beam and bars) … I have, at times, felt like I’m 7 years old again while doing those.”
She had to grow up in a hurry, on beam, after LF senior Katie Meier — a beam specialist — underwent season-ending hip surgery Dec. 14. Schmidt knew, beginning with LF’s first post-holiday meet earlier this month, she’d be counted to be the team’s fourth scorer in the event.
“The addition of Carly,” said Straus, “has been huge, for a number of reasons. We have three outstanding all-arounders, which is great. But you need that strong fourth scorer, that consistent fourth scorer.”
Schmidt is that.
And more.
She has earned the third score in an event a few times in 2011-12.
“Having Carly,” Straus added, “gives us that chance to make it again as a state team. I love how hard she works, how she expects to hit each routine, how she constantly wants to upgrade routines for the good of the team. And how driven and focused she is.
“To be out of the sport for three years,” she added, “and to come back like Carly has … It’s been great. She’s been great.”
Moccia and McKeon, after a recent practice, sat and chatted about their new teammate in LF’s gymnastics room. Both admire Schmidt’s power.
“She gets so much lift off the table (vault), and it’s so easy to tell how naturally talented she is,” said Moccia, who, with an eighth-place effort in the all-around (36.55), helped the Scouts finish third (145.83) at Saturday’s Lake County Invite on the home mats.
Added McKeon, fifth in the all-around (36.975) on Saturday: “Powerful. Carly is so powerful. We all enjoy training with her and competing with her.”
Last spring Schmidt didn’t just compete in track and field. Mike Schmidt, who played football at Lane Tech, encouraged his daughter to consider competing at a fitness competition.
Carly Schmidt did some research and, in April, entered a couple of competitions in Bolingbrook.
She won both, on the same day: Miss Teen Fitness, Miss Teen Model Search. For the former, Schmidt displayed her strength, flexibility and agility for judges. The routine lasted 90 seconds.
Had anybody else attempted it, it would have felt like 90 minutes.
Ninety painful minutes.
But Schmidt isn’t one of those fierce, ’round-the-clock competitors.
She has a fun side.
A light side, a … high-pitched side.
“When some of us see her in a hallway at school, we stop and talk,” Moccia said. “But we don’t talk normally; we all talk in baby voices. We turn into 3-year-olds.”
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