Buckeye Reporter

Tessa Kelly is truly unique among her peers at Fairview High School.

Besides being elected class president and enrolled in four Advanced Placement classes, the junior is the sole representative on the school’s gymnastics team. She is also having quite the season, one for the history books.

“I started when I was eight years old in the second grade, which is considered really old to start gymnastics,” Kelly explained. “I watched the 2012 Olympics, and watched all the gymnastics, and told my mom that she needed to sign me up because I was so into it.”

Kelly competes in four events for Fairview: beam, uneven bars, floor exercise, and vault. Some events she likes more than others. Last year as a sophomore, she finished 10th in the state in floor exercise after spending her freshman year battling injuries.

“My best is probably floor, because last year I made it to states on floor,” Kelly explained. “When I was younger, vault was always my best, and I’m still pretty good. So, I like doing that. Bars are not my thing. And then there’s the beam which everyone thinks is so scary. And it is scary because it’s only four inches wide.”

Looking to build on that success this year, Kelly has been training and traveling with girls at St. Joseph Academy in Cleveland. However, she competes only for the Warriors.

“When you get to high school, it’s all about consistency,” Kelly explained. “It’s about maintaining all of your skills from the previous year and gaining new ones if you can. So that’s the biggest challenge. Plus, when you get older, gymnastics is a lot on your body, so staying healthy can be hard.”

With the recent expansion of the Great Lakes Conference, Kelly competed at the inaugural GLC conference championship in early February, featuring teams from both the GLC and Southwest Conference. Kelly finished first at the championships in vault and floor, while earning a second-place finish on the beam and in the all-around, earning All-Conference honors. In addition, she finished fourth on the bars.

“That was a pretty good meet,” Kelly said. “North Olmsted and Westlake both have gymnastic teams, so when they joined our conference, we were able to have enough teams…I know almost all the girls that are in our conference, so that was a pretty fun meet, too.”

After qualifying tor the OHSAA District meet on vault, Kelly traveled to Mentor this past weekend to represent the Warriors. She finished in 13th place, which qualified her for a return to the state meet in Columbus in early March.

“Tessa is such an easy-going yet determined and driven athlete,” Darcy Ranallo, Kelly’s gymnastics coach explained. “She is well respected by not only the athletes she trains with daily but also by coaches, gymnasts, and officials from all over Northeast Ohio…Tessa is the perfect student-athlete to represent Fairview High School athletics.”

It would seem the sky is the limit for this junior. She continues to juggle her strong academic workload, extracurricular activities like Key Club and National Honor Society, and working a job, all while practicing and training for gymnastics. Although she loves the sport, Kelly admits she does not plan on competing when she attends college in a couple of years, but will be attending many events as a spectator.

“It has taught me a lot about fears,” Kelly said. “In life, you’re going to be scared of stuff. You learn how to overcome it when you practice a lot. Gymnastics also definitely teaches you that if you want to be good at something, you have to put in the time. You can’t just expect to be good if you’re not going to be practicing. But when I’m done with it, I’ve met a lot of people, so I’ll definitely be keeping those friendships.”

Original source can be found here.