A Page Out of the Diary of a Little Girl

Elizabeth Anne Edwards 10A
History Project: Nadia Comaneci
[ Oh, and just pretend I'm an 8 year old girl, okay? :) ]


Dear Diary,

It was show and tell at school today! My favorite one was my best friend Joanie’s. Her mom was a gymnast so she brought all her mom, Nadia Comaneci's Olympic medals that she won a really long time ago. There were 5 gold medals, 3 silver ones, and 1 bronze one. She has a lot more medals from other times, but it’s too much to carry! She told us all about her mom and what she did, too. She started gymnastics when she was six years old. You can only imagine the hours and hours of practice she went through to be as good as she is…or was. She stopped doing gymnastics when she was 20 years old. But, anyway I think she’s the coolest person ever. I watched some old Olympic videos of her with Joanie one day, and she was so good! She had the best routines ever. She even got two moves named after her when she was fourteen. One is the Comaneci salto. I take gymnastics, and my teacher says it’s still hard for people to do that now. It’s this cast to straddle front flip on the uneven bars. I’m not sure what the other one is called, but it’s a toe-on, half-turn to a back flip dismount. I wanna learn how to do that someday! She was the first gymnast ever to score a perfect 10 in the Olympics! Part of it was the Comaneci salto. I bet the judges mouths dropped wide open. I bet she made history with that. Again when she was fourteen! She got 10s lots of other times, too. She definitely deserved it. I know she made Romania proud. She won 25 medals in her whole gymnast life (from 14 to 19 years old), most of them are gold. That’s just amazing! They even put her in the Hall of Fame. It was after she retired but that’s still cool. I think she’s so awesome because she shows us that just for a moment, you can be perfect. It’s possible. Age doesn’t matter at all, either. I wanna be just like her when I get older. She accomplished her dream of making it to the Olympics. Now I know I can make my dreams come true. I want to make it to the Olympics, too. She overcame the struggles, and so can I. I won’t quit and get frustrated when I’m having a bad day at the gym. No one can tell me I can’t do it. Nothing can stop me. The next time I go to practice, I’ll work extra hard to be just like Nadia. She’s my hero.