Senior Kyra Rosencran was writhing in pain in the trainer room; “Where does it hurt? Can you move this way? Can you move that way?” The gym trainer asked.
The pain had built up the whole season. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t hide it anymore, she could hardly walk at this point.
Before the trainer could even get three words out of the diagnosis, It was as if time stopped. Rosencrans mind went blank; it couldn’t comprehend the information.
She knew this marked the end of her 11 years in gymnastics.
“That was, honestly, one of the worst moments of my life,” Rosencran said. “There was nothing I could do about it.
Rosencran was a hyperactive kid. That, along with her moms encouragement, led her to two gymnastic world championships and one state championship; One at age 10 and one at age 11. She started at 3 years old after her mom entered her in mother-daughter lessons at Capital City Gymnastics in Lincoln, Nebraska where she grew up.
“I was always running around the house, like I was crazy,” Rosencran said. “I was a wild child, I was always breaking things, flipping around and everything. My mom was like, ‘We cannot do this anymore,’ So she found a local gymnastics place, put me in.”
Gymnastics was an intense passion for Rosencran. Whether she was watching it on TV or talking about it with her mom. At age 7 she began to practice gymnastics on her own, working out three to four times a week for up to three hours consisting of strength training, beam, floor, and vault practice .
“I just spent all my time (at the gym),” Rosencran said. “They’re honestly my family; I mean, I grew up there. I would come early, stay late, help fundraise for them etcetera, to be honest, spend more time there than I do at my house.”
She trained for her next competition over the summer. At one of these practices, she injured her back while practicing back-handsprings on the balance beam.
“ (the injury) had been aggravating me, like it kept aggravating me all through the summer,” Rosencran said. “I just kept taking Tylenol and pulling it on through. Competition season was coming, like, ‘I’ve worked so hard(through all the injuries) all summer, I can’t just not go.’”
Rosencrans state competition at age 12 was held in December 2019 at North Platte, Nebraska. Despite her injury she faced over the summer, she attended. That was not the only problem for Rosencranz, who also forgot to bring her bar grips, used for boosting grasp while swinging and releasing the bar.
“This one girl let me borrow hers, but you have to break them in, and hers were stiff,” Rosencran said. “I went to jump to the high bar, and my grip caught the bar wrong, and I hurt my back because it had arched a little bit. I was scared, actually I was more angry, like, I worked hard just to get hurt again, like, it just didn’t seem fair.”
The fact that she still had a run for first place fueled her to keep going despite her injury. She didn’t tell her coach or mother to avoid being pulled from the competition early. Rosencran sat in front of the podium after finishing her routines to wait for the results.
“I was sitting down and kept moving around because I was like, ‘Oh my God, my back hurts so bad,’ I just couldn’t sit still,” Rosencran said. “I swear every emotion you could feel is what I felt. I was like ‘if I don’t get first, and I can barely walk right now, I’m gonna be mad’.”
The announcers called third place, then second, and finally, Rosencran’s name rang out as the champion. The only challenge she had left to face was the walk up to the podium.
Upon reaching the podium she failed to stand by herself, that’s when her mom realized something was wrong. She had to wait for an evaluation until they returned to Lincoln, so she was left to bear the pain. At the next practice, she consulted her gym trainer.
“I was telling him what happened and everything, and the pain I was feeling,” Rosencran said. “He told me what was wrong with me. I don’t remember, because as soon as he said, ‘Kira, you’re not’ I don’t remember anything else.”
Rosencran hyperextend a muscle near her spinal cord, causing her to have muscle spasms near the nerves in her spine. That’s the moment her gymnastics career ended. She had never lived without gymnastics. She didn’t know what to do. Every goal she held revolved around gymnastics.
Two weeks after that injury, Rosencran moved to Bonney Lake in Washington state.
“It was kind of easy for me to suppress my feelings, because I was moving,” Rosencran said. “There wasn’t anything to think about except for moving.”
She enrolled into Glacier Middle School. To her displeasure, the school policy did not allow her to join any sports until the seventh grade but this gave her time to recover from her injury. Once given the opportunity, she joined basketball, cross country, track, soccer, and ballet for a short period. Before joining any more sports in middle school, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Despite this, her passion for athletics left a lasting mark on Glacier Middle School.
“Before COVID happened, my school had a rule where girls couldn’t play football, and so I petitioned the school board,” Rosencran said. “I was the only person to ever challenge the board about that. I don’t know exactly what happened, because COVID happened, but I believe that they did pass a thing where girls can play football now.”
Rosencran’s athletic life continued despite the pandemic. During the covid lockdown, she spent her freetime training. She ran up to five miles a day to stay in shape. This was to her benefit; When she moved to Texas the summer going into ninth grade, she was introduced to the Panthers basketball team.
“That’s (the Summer) when a lot of kids were up here practicing and everything, trying to make good impressions on the coach for basketball,” Rosencran said. “I had never had to do that(impress coaches), just because gymnastics was such a different environment. I did do those other sports after gymnastics, but not for a very long period because of Covid, so I didn’t know how any of that worked.”
She was hesitant to commit to basketball. Rosencran credits now senior Abby Cross for motivating her to join.
“She had made a comment about basketball,” Cross said. “I told her that she should come to an open gym, I thought it would be fun. I think she really surprised and impressed everyone. Honestly, she inspires me a lot too.”
When tryouts came around, Rosencran made the Freshman team. Although she had found her way back onto a sports team, more medical issues revealed themselves. Only three days before Christmas she was diagnosed with appendicitis.
“I had woken up that morning and I was in so much pain,” Rosencran said. “ I was like, ‘I’m just being dramatic,’ and tried to shrug it off. I just started getting more playing time too, I can’t just not show up. By the end of the game, I could barely walk.”
After she got home, she laid on the couch, but could not stand back up. Once her mom realized the severity of her situation, she took her to the Texas Children’s Hospital.
“The doctor had just left, so they had to put me in for a semi-emergency surgery, like in the morning, the earliest that you get the doctor up there,” Rosencran said. “I had surgery on Christmas Eve. I was out for two weeks, missed a few games and it was such a setback, because it was only two weeks but because we were freshmen, we were developing so fast and gaining so many new skills that, when I came back, it was like the team that I had left was not the same team.”
This setback only fueled Rosencran. In her sophomore year, she was moved up to varsity by the previous head coach.
“She loved my potential,” Rosencran said. “She saw me playing a lot and all this stuff, and then she moved me up. She did not play me six games straight, six games straight and didn’t touch the court.
After being benched she confronted the coach. Despite her dreams of being on varsity, she was willing to be moved down to JV just to get more play time.
“(The previous coach) was like, ‘No, Kyra, like, it’s fine. Like you’re a varsity player now’,” Rosencran said. “On top of that she took me back from my injury leave way earlier than I should have, because she was like, ‘we need you for the game.’ I was at every game, but I didn’t play at all.”
Rosencran went in to take her Varsity pictures on the team media day, her coach asked, “Do you still have your JV jersey?” That day she walked in to have her varsity portrait taken, but she walked out a JV member again.
“She knew that I wanted to play college basketball, and she had always laughed it off and like, kind of dismissed it,” Rosencran said. “That just pushed me to work harder, I just really wanted to prove her wrong.”
Playing for the JV team allowed Rosencran to build her confidence back up after being broken down. She gives much of the credits to JV Coach Becky Short.
“When she got moved down to JV, she thought the world was over like it’s the worst case scenario,” Short said. “I told her ‘let’s find your purpose, find your drive’ You just have to find it and get it back and that what she did.It’s just her hard work, her attitude phenomenal, her work ethic goes beyond like you see Kira from freshman year till now and the growth is wild.”
Now as a senior, Rosecran plays for varsity. Rosencran plans to study Marinebiology in college, and still plans to pursue basketball. She hopes her life story can inspire more high school athletes to pursue their dreams.
