OGC gymnast wins battle with knee injury, and a trip to Cancun

The serious brace on her knee serves as a constant reminder of the pain she went through, but now Christie Boswell-Patterson has a much better item to commemorate a victory over a severe injury – a pair of gold medals, and an upcoming trip to Cancun to boot.

 
Since age three, Boswell-Patterson’s “second home” has been the Ottawa Gymnastics Centre where she flips, spins and twists 20 hours a week for training. It makes it all the more unbelievable that such a major injury would occur so innocently.

“I just tripped and fell,” Boswell-Patterson recalls. “I wish I had a more spectacular story, but I was skipping essentially and just went down the wrong way and tore three ligaments.”

Anyone familiar with parts of the knee will know Boswell-Patterson did the grand daddy of them all – tearing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial collateral ligament (MCL) and meniscus. The result was a trip to the surgeon and over a year off of gymnastics.

“It was hard not being able to train as much, but I’m also glad in a way because it made me realize how much I truly love it,” says the Grade 10 Glebe Collegiate Institute student who was reconsidering whether gymnastics was worth all the hours when she first started high school. “As soon as I could walk after my surgery, I was in here conditioning and getting ready to be in the best shape I could be when I came back.”

Boswell-Patterson couldn’t do much besides upper-body work – plenty of chin-ups and push-ups were part of the drill – but she could swing on the uneven bars, which is one of the two events she won at a recent Tour Selection meet near Barrie.

Bars is Boswell-Patterson’s “happy place” where she could spend all day, but her other victory in the Level 8 13+ category at the provincial event was far more unlikely.

Starting on the balance beam – the most punishing apparatus for errors – flooded the 15-year-old with anxiety.

“I kind of felt like I was nine years old again at my first competition. After not competing for a year, I was pretty nervous,” notes Boswell-Patterson. “I wasn’t so much worried about falling, it was just that I’d realized how much work went into this.

“It was like I’d been training for a whole year for this one meet, so it seemed like there was a lot at stake for me.”

Boswell-Patterson certainly didn’t anticipate winning the beam event, or placing in the top-eight spots overall that qualified for the Tour meet in Cancun, let alone reaching the third-place position in the all-around competition.

“I wasn’t expecting to make it at all,” acknowledges Boswell-Patterson, who watched from the sidelines last year when five of her teammates qualified for the Tour competition. “This was supposed to be my practice meet back, but I’m not going to say no to a trip to Cancun.”

While Boswell-Patterson was the only athlete from OGC to qualify for the Tour this year, it really felt like a victory for the whole club, says general manager Kellie Hinnells.

“We were thrilled,” Hinnells recounts. “She’s such a great role model because through it all, she just continued to work hard and stayed positive. To have that happen as the end result is kind of a good lesson that if you work hard, it really does happen.”
OGC celebrates certification, will also host provincial qualifier
Boswell-Patterson’s success wasn’t the only reason for celebration at the OGC recently, however. The Westboro club last week officially got its passing grade after an intensive ISO certification process that reviews a business’s quality management systems.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” Hinnells beams. “It was a lot of work and to be the only (sports) organization to have done it is a piece of attention that makes us stand out from other clubs.”

It was straight back to work for OGC staff and volunteers nonetheless as the club prepares to host a large provincial championships qualifying meet Dec. 3-4. Thirty-two OGC athletes, including Boswell-Patterson, will compete at the event that has the makings of the best one yet, with OGC showing off the bright new lighting that came as a result of a Trillium grant, as well as the video replay screens they plan to set up.

“They’re really excited to compete,” notes Hinnells. “It’s the one opportunity where they get to have mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother and sister, etc. coming to watch them.