As the gymnastics season starts, senior captain Talia Simonett feels saddened over not being able to participate due to her current back injury.

“Last season I found out that I had this injury and a couple months ago, right before school ended, found out that I no longer will be able to ever do gymnastics again. I was pretty heartbroken when I found that out,” Simonett said.

Simonett said her injury consists of two stress fractures on her spine that cause disc degeneration between her vertebrates.

“I have two stress fractures on the side of my spine where my L5 would be, but I have an extra bone and then I have this thing called disgeneration where my disks between my vertebrates shrink and I have one that no longer is there anymore,” Simonett said.

According to Simonett, the injury puts her spine at risk of slipping, which would hurt her even more.

“Every time I would tumble backward, my vertebrates would hit and then they cracked. So on two sides of what would be my L5, but is that extra bone, they’re starting to combine and go inward on my spine, which is why I can’t do gymnastics anymore because if they connect, my spine could slip and then who knows what would happen,” Simonett said.

Sophomore gymnast Savannah Romero said Simonett left a hole in the gymnastics team that will be hard to fill.

“She left a big gap when she had to leave because she gave us a lot of her points and now we don’t have two people scoring super high, we just have one, so a lot of people are working harder to fill in that place,” Romero said.

Gymnastics coach Gretchen Novak said Simonett’s role as captain has not changed or been affected due to her inability to participate in gymnastics.

“She comes to every meet and every practice, so it sucks that she can’t compete, but it doesn’t seem to affect anything as a captain,” Novak said.

Although Simonett cannot participate in the sport, she said she still holds her role as captain, as well as team manager.

“I still wanted to stay involved in the gymnastics community, so I talked to my coach and she said that I can still have my role as captain, but I also will be doing manager,” Simonett said.

According to Romero, Simonett’s role as captain has changed to a more supportive role, due to her injury.

“She can’t physically show how to do the skills now. It affects her leadership because she can’t exactly show that even though it may be scary, you can still do this. It’s all just vocal now, but she still shows that she motivates everyone in the gym,” Romero said.

Novak said the gymnastics team is still scoring well despite losing Simonett’s high scores.

“We’re actually still better than we were last year, but that’s because we’ve received some new girls,” Novak said.

Simonett said watching her teammates do gymnastics is painful, but she still enjoys encouraging them.

“I am there everyday at practice, but it is very hard watching everybody do something that I love. I am still there for them and I always will be supportive of them,” Simonett said. “I am more of a support rather than a role model in a way. I am more there for them emotionally if they ever need to talk. I am still there for them to look up to, but not in a physical, competitive way.”