For a performer like Carlene Allen, the American stage of gymnastics is the perfect place.

This past year the Bracebridge teenager has been with the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) division 1 Bowling Green State University (BGSU) Falcons gymnastics team in Bowling Green, Ohio doing what she knows and loves to do.

“I love performing tricks that are considered impossible in front of people. I love the feeling of flipping and twisting, and I love the push to always get better and better,” Allen said in an e-mail from Ohio.

After great success in her final year at Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School, where she not only won Athlete of the Year honours and was the recipient of the Quigley Memorial Athlete of the Year award at the Community Sports Awards, she won a gold medal at the Ontario Winter Games and earned her spot with the BGSU team as a walk-on.

Although the university has more full-time students than Bracebridge has people, Bowling Green is a small town with a population of 29,000.

“Bowling Green is just a small little town like Bracebridge. It has that cosy feeling to it and is very welcoming to college students. I feel comfortable in the town and the school,” she said.

Homesickness was inevitable though, said her father Dave Allen. However the yearning to come home has lessened after each passing holiday.

It was still a difficult transition for the Bracebridge 19-year-old.

“For the first little while it was hard not to be around anything familiar and being so far from home. But coming to school and being a part of a team allowed me to already have a place in the school community and have an automatic team of great friends,” she said. “The busy schedule of classes, practice, weight room training, extra cardio sessions, homework and maybe a little sleep kept my mind off missing home too much.”

Only an hour outside Detroit, with just a six-hour drive, her parents took several opportunities to visit and to see her team compete.

Although she garnered some positive feedback and performed well at the school’s inter-university squad competition, the bright-eyed teenager suffered a season-ending injury in December, falling from the uneven bars and injuring her back and groin in “the worst crash ever.” Carlene has been working toward regaining her health ever since, but the experience has been frustrating.

“It’s been hard sitting out this season, but I now have experience with a competition setting and have an idea about the kind of performance that is expected,” she said. “I think that I can use my time on the sidelines as preparation for the next few years. It was also so much fun to go see and cheer on my teammates.”

With eight freshmen on the team, Allen has a tight-knit group of teammates and friends to bond with and to share the first-year experience.

“This year, we have the largest freshmen class that Bowling Green gymnastics has had in years. We came from all over (Ohio, Connecticut, Georgia and Canada) and bonded very quickly,” she said. “Everyone (coaches included) on the team was very surprised with how close the freshmen became and how well we all get along. We all helped and supported each other the entire year to feel more at home in college and we immediately became a family.”

Allen’s parents encouraged her and registered her in a variety of sports early on in her life such as swimming, soccer and dance. However, at age three it was gymnastics that she really loved and has been doing ever since.

“I have been with gymnastics so long now that it is so hard to imagine doing anything else. When I was younger I played soccer and took dance, but I always came back to gymnastics. I still enjoy playing and watching other sports, but I only have enough time for gymnastics,” she said.

Her dad remembers her dream to attend an American university and compete on the gymnastics team and join the circus. He finds it interesting how her life has led her closer to achieving it.

Competition takes on a completely different complexion down in the U.S., explained Dave.

“The screaming is non-stop . . . it’s like a basketball game,” he said.

He added his daughter had to adjust to the shouts and screams.

Allen as a young girl was shy and reserved, said her mother Annette, but when her skills and abilities improved in gymnastics, so did her confidence. When she was in her preteens she “started to be a performer.”

Even in her first months with the BGSU team, her coaches noticed an expressive and dramatic sense in her floor routines. They cast Allen as the example for the other teammates to emulate.

“I think that the performance part of gymnastics is my favourite. I started being goofy —making faces and over-exaggerating the dance — in my floor routine back in club (gymnastics) just to make my teammates laugh and make practice more fun. But now, I find that I have more fun when I get to show off dance and skills for everyone. Performing is definitely something that I missed by being injured,” she said.

Although Allen has earned recognition for her athletic accomplishments, she maintains good grades (of As and Bs). Her creative flair is not just reserved for the

gymnasium.

Before leaving for the states last year she earned a well-recognized, jury-selected Jean E. MacDonald Memorial Award for visual art from Muskoka Arts & Crafts. She has a love and passion for fashion and art that she brings to the sport.

“The entire sport of gymnastics is an art form in itself. The movement, the contortion of the body and the performance aspect of it makes the sport so unique and interesting,” added Allen. “I have used these same themes in my artwork to become just as interesting.”