At Freedom, students have the opportunity to represent their school as an independent athlete for sports the school does not offer, one of those sports being gymnastics. Senior Daisy Lewis has been representing Freedom for the last three years, and she is finishing her last season with Freedom this year as an independent gymnast.
“Competing as an independent is so different from other sports, but it’s fun because I get to meet so many different people from other schools,” Lewis said.
During Lewis’ career as a Freedom athlete, she took on feats never seen before. In women’s gymnastics, there’s a total of four events: uneven bars, beam, vault and floor. The events are scored on a ten point scoring scale. In Lewis’s prior season, she hit remarkable scores in all events. Making it to WPIALS in the ‘22-23 season was something amazing for Lewis, but it wasn’t new. Prior to the ‘22-23 season, Lewis managed to get to WPIALS her sophomore and freshman year. A feat among most is to attend WPIAL’s once, but four times? It shows how serious Lewis is about this sport.
During her prior junior year season, Lewis managed to not only go to WPIALS, but also take home the gold for Freedom in two events, Floor and Vault. Lewis fell short of the overall gold medal and placed second in the overall category. Still bringing home two WPIAL titles for Freedom, Lewis knew she was able to win the overall category this year. Lewis practices at Arcadia, which is a gym in Beaver County. While Lewis practices five times a week, her first meet had just taken place on Jan. 5 at Monaca Turners Gym. During the meet, Lewis had a good night, getting the highest score on vault with a 9.75, which qualified her to compete in vault at WPIALS. With already one qualification to WPIALs, Lewis isn’t going to stop there. On Jan. 16, Lewis competed in her second meet of the season at Moon High School, where she qualified for WPIALs on floor with a 9.7. Unfortunately, Lewis fell short on beam and got a 8.9, leaving her 0.1 point away from qualifying for beam. Even so, Lewis still has a multitude of meets throughout her season where she can qualify for beam and uneven bars and hopefully set records for Freedom once again.
“I want to win WPIALs this year because I’ve been so close the last two years, but even placing at WPIALs is a big deal. I really just want to finish out the seasons with a good overall attitude and know I did the best I possibly could,” Lewis said.