After nearly 11 years as a gymnast, 13-year-old Alia Wilson has developed a high pain threshold.
Years of contorting her body around uneven bars, awkward tendon-stretching landings off the vault, and scary falls off the balance beam serve as painful reminders Wilson's road to the Western Canada Summer Games next week in Fort McMurray has had a few unplanned detours.
In February, while training on the balance beam for the Twisters Invitational in Abbotsford (the first WCSG qualifying meet), Wilson rolled a finger during a back-handspring dismount and broke it.
She continued to train for a week before she told her Prince George Gymnastics Club coach Jenn Schwandt she could no longer handle the pain.
An X-ray confirmed the broken finger and that sidelined Wilson for two months. Wilson's recovery took longer than anticipated because she was fitted with the wrong type of cast, which failed to fully immobilize the finger.
Wilson and her coach were worried that would prove too much of a setback to keep Wilson's hopes of making Team B.C. alive, but with one more chance to make the six-female, six-male team, she nailed it. Wilson finished fifth overall at the Western Canada Summer Games trials at the Ogopogo Invitational in West Kelowna June 7 and on Monday she will be in Fort McMurray to begin two days of competition.
"All the hard work pays off," said Wilson. "I was so excited.
"It will be a great experience, I just have to be consistent. I want to finish in the top five, maybe in uneven bars."
The diminutive Wilson is a few inches shy of five feet and weighs just 85 pounds - the perfect stature for the beam, uneven bars and vault, but not ideal for the floor routine, her least favourite and weakest event, which requires powerful arms and legs. She attended a provincial team training camp last weekend in Surrey and Schwandt says she's ready for the Games.
"She's just a hard worker, and I'm so proud of her, especially after a bad year," said Schwandt. "She broke her hand and we didn't have high expectations at trials because she hadn't competed. I was so shocked when she made the team."
At 13, Wilson is getting up to the level she needs to be able to challenge for provincial titles and national team spots. Girls as old as 16 will be competing against her at the Western Canada Games and she's had to step up the difficulty of her routines considerably to keep pace with the upper-tier athletes.
"I just like learning new things," said Wilson. "I can do bigger stuff now and can stick it in competitions."
Wilson's Prince George mentor, former provincial champion Lina Goto, retired from gymnastics this year.
Now Wilson is the one the other girls in the gym look up to as an example of how far they can go. Wilson is known for her shy, quiet demeanour and rarely shows her emotions during a competition.
She learned from Goto how to develop mental toughness to tune out all distractions at a meet and that's helped her climb the provincial ladder.
"She taught me not to think about the judges and everybody watching you and just to think about what you have to do," said Wilson.
Learning new elements and training her body to jump higher and move faster takes time. Wilson has been training five hours a day, four days a week to get ready for the Games and follows a similar gym schedule even when she's going to school during the winter and spring seasons.
Now heading into her Grade 8 year at College Heights secondary school, she still finds time to get her homework done and has kept her spot on the principal's list.
This is Wilson's first season competing in the Junior Olympic Level 9 category and in January she captured the overall individual gold medal at the Flip City Invitational in Langley.The WCSG meet follows the Canadian Provincial Program format now being phased out in Alberta. CPP Level 5 standards are considered tougher than JO Level 9.
Wilson competed in the B.C. Winter Games in 2014 in Mission but hasn't ever represented her province in a multi-sport event. She watched the best artistic gymnasts in the country compete at the 2015 Canada Winter Games in February and was suitably impressed.
"It was really cool to watch," she said.
