![On Tuesday, Jan. 28, Wayland Cares director J Verhoosky led a presentation on the importance of choosing to be vulnerable in conversations. Through various activities and experiments, the audience was instructed to confront how they approach risk taking and their comfort zones. “[My biggest takeaway was] make yourself available for other people and share things you might not share with other people to make them feel like they're in a safe environment,” junior Addison Voight said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/JLb1q3m4ZHvNAKYzv7c60kyyrrafzS8pJlYoJcoj.png)
This season, Wayland and Weston high schools joined together to launch their new gymnastics team. Previous to this, there was not competitive gymnastics program affiliated with Wayland High School.
According to senior captain Nicole Angelova, the possibility of starting a gymnastics team has been around for years. Wayland moms advocated for a high school gymnastics team opposed to only having the option to compete with a club team on a Facebook page.
“They did a lot of research to gauge the interest and ability of our students,” Athletic Director Heath Rollins said. “Once they were able to prove there was some interest in doing it, we looked at the feasibility of finding a coach, league, competition and place to compete.
According to Rollins, the process of creating the team took about a year. There were several concerns raised between Rollins and the athletic director at Weston High School, Michael McGrath.
“We were still a little concerned about having the numbers to support the team long term, but we were able to pair up [because] Weston was in the same boat,” Rollins said.
Their first meet was scheduled for Dec.13 against Cambridge Rindge and Latin (CRL), however, it was canceled due to the CRL team not having enough gymnasts on their team to compete.
“The tough thing about gymnastics is it’s not growing in the state, it’s shrinking,” Rollins said. “We had to do a lot of research across the state to see if it was going to be around long.”
According to Angelova, due to the low volume of people taking part in gymnastics this season, the try-out process was fairly easy. Head coach and former club gymnast at Pennsylvania State University, Julia Schaefer, took 12 girls on her team.
Wayland and Weston have had combined sports teams in the past including the combined crew, cross country skiing and girls ice hockey teams. Despite athletes from different towns taking part in these teams, athletes find friendships within their teammates.
“We all share the common interest of gymnastics, so it was pretty easy for all of us to become friends,” Angelova said.
Unusual to the typical rivalry between Wayland and Weston, including the annual thanksgiving football game, or the lacrosse, soccer and basketball games, the team comes together to compete on beam, vault, bars and floor.
“Half of us do club gymnastics, so we already have routines made up for meets,” Angelova said.
Due to club teams practicing throughout the whole year and the school team only needing a space for the winter season, it is difficult to schedule practices at reasonable times according to Rollins.
“No location is perfect [and] we only had the option to practice late at night. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but it was enough to get us started,” Rollins said.
The team practices every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at the Massachusetts Gymnastics Center (MGC) in Sudbury.
The team had their first meet on Jan. 6 against Westford Academy (WA) where they fell short, ending with a score of 129.95-110.6.
“I am excited for the season and to see how we come together to compete,” Angelova said.
