Representing West Virginia
January 27, 2008 01:53 PM | General
January 27, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When Mehgan Morris became serious about gymnastics as a child, her dreams of accomplishment in the sport didn’t involve standing on a medal podium in some future Olympic Games. The Belle, W.Va., native simply wanted to suit up in the Gold and Blue and represent her home state.
 |
||
| West Virginia's Mehgan Morris earned all-conference honors on bars in 2007.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“It was always my goal since I was really little. When I got involved in gymnastics it was never like the Olympics that I was working for,” Morris said. “I always just wanted a scholarship here so this has been my lifelong dream.”
That lifelong dream began innocently enough with an abundance of childhood energy and a mother determined to harness it in a constructive way.
“When I was really little, like three years old, I was a ball of energy,” Morris said. “My mom couldn’t handle me at home so she looked in the classifieds and happened to find a gymnastics thing in there and I ended up being naturally talented.”
That talent has helped Morris thrive at WVU under the direction of Head Coach Linda Burdette. Morris has known Burdette since she was eight years old and has always wanted to compete for her.
“It’s really nice to be able to represent my home state. I couldn’t imagine being a part of any other program or being coached by anyone but Linda (Burdette),” Morris said. “She is one of the best head coaches in the country and you couldn’t ask for a better person overall. She has every good quality you could imagine.”
As she begins her junior year as a Mountaineer gymnast, Morris is primed for her best season yet. That would be quite an accomplishment considering she was EAGL rookie of the year in 2006 and followed that up by earning first team all-EAGL honors on bars in 2007.
“If you told me that I would accomplish those things before I got here I probably would have laughed,” Morris said.
Her accomplishments were not without significant adversity at the start of her career. She injured her back in the last couple meets of her senior year in high school and came to Morgantown still recuperating and trying to get back to full strength.
“I came in with the back injury so for the first two or three months I was in the training room every day,” Morris said. “I didn’t even know if I would be able to compete my freshman year but I saw about 15 doctors and got something worked out.”
Her back injury was a constant source of frustration throughout her first two years. Rest didn’t help and her back continued to hamper her progress in competitions.
“It was upsetting because I couldn’t practice to my fullest extent so I couldn’t expect the coaches to expect 100 percent out of me at the meets,” Morris said. “It’s hard to deal with. I always knew I could do a little bit better if I were healthy.”
Finally, Morris got a series of cortisone shots to loosen up the muscles in her back and slowly but surely she began traveling the road back to 100 percent health.
“I just took it one meet at a time. I wanted to just jump back into practice and do everything at once and the trainers had to just have me do a little bit at a time,” Morris said. “That helped me to just take one step at a time and get back into it slowly.”
After mainly focusing on bars and the floor exercise in her first two injury plagued but successful years, Morris is now healthy and has begun to compete on the balance beam and on vault.
While being healthy has helped her outlook, focusing on four events instead of two has been a challenge and has hurt her production in some areas.
“It has helped my confidence a lot. All around I’m more average on everything. Bars and floor have always been my strongest but now it has averaged out more. That’s tough because I have to spread my energy out on all four events rather than just two.”
While bars has always been her strongest event, Morris has found it very challenging to add the vault to her gymnastics repertoire.
“I haven’t gotten to where I want to be on bars yet. I haven’t fine-tuned everything. It just takes a little bit longer with the focus that is on the other events,” Morris said. “The vault is the most challenging for me. It’s not challenging for a lot of other people but I struggle with power.”
As the season rolls along Morris has set personal goals to win the EAGL championships on bars, garner all-EAGL honors on bars and be very competitive in floor while improving on the beam and in the vault.
As for her team goals, despite a slow, 2-4 start to the season, she knows WVU will compete better as they begin to carry over their practice habits to the Coliseum floor.
“We have more talent on the team than we have had since I’ve been here overall. We have more depth,” Morris said. “I want us to get our confidence up and be able to perform the way we practice because if we do that we will be able to beat almost anybody.”
