After the Whistle: Delanie Spear

SALISBURY, Md. – A serious injury can be the ultimate test for an athlete. It can take months–or even years–of hard work just to return to form.

Gymnast Delanie Spear had been competing with Galaxy Gymnastics for years when she started experiencing severe back pain.

After trying to push through it, Spear received a devastating diagnosis: multiple fractures in her lower vertebrae, a condition known as spondylolysis. “The doctor told me, you know, most people do not return from this injury,” Spear recalled, “And if they do return, they don’t compete on the same level, typically.”

It kept her out of the sport for nine months, a daunting reality for someone whose life had revolved around it. “Gymnastics had been my like, identity for a very long time,” Spear said. “That was what I did all summer, every night after school. So, I didn’t really know anything else. Not having anything was so strange, and I really struggled for a while there because I just, like–I lost a big piece of me.”

With no guarantee she would ever be able to compete again, Spear got to work. It took a year and a half of physical therapy to be prepared for a return to competition, but there was no timeline for the mental hurdles: “In all the times I would doubt myself, I would kind of think, ‘I’m doing this for me a few months ago when I wasn’t able to do this,’ because that’s all I wanted to do so bad was gymnastics.”

On many fronts, she had to start from scratch, relearning basic skills she had previously mastered as a younger gymnast. Spear said some skills came back easily, and some she didn’t regain until this past season, a full two years since her return. Through it all, the team at Galaxy Gymnastics helped provide the extra lift she sometimes needed to keep going. Of her teammates and coaches, Spear said, “[Just them] being there and understanding the best that they could what I was dealing with and cheering me on. Even for the smallest skills, like doing a back handspring on the floor again when that’s a level three skill, but being so excited for me. Even throughout my injury, when I was coming into the gym just to sit and watch and support them, they were supporting me.”

Of course, Spear had motivations of her own. “I’ve also had a goal of being a state champion, so I kept working in hopes to do that,” she said. 

After returning to competition, Spear did not win a state championship. But after earning a spot at the USA Gymnastics Region 7 Championship (Region 7 consists of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.) on Galaxy’s Xcel Diamond team, she had a chance to do something even bigger.

“Before I went onto the floor, I looked at my coach Miss Steph, and I was like, ‘I have to sell this routine like I’ve never done before,'” Spear recollected of the moments leading up to her pivotal performance. “Right before I went on the floor, she was like, ‘Like your life depends on it.’ So I went onto the floor and I did that, I put everything into that routine.”

With the performance of her life, everything became worth it. Spear brought home gold at the Region 7 Championship with a career best 9.6 on her floor routine, a full-circle moment that shocked even her: “I thought I was going to be like third or something. And they called my name and I was like in disbelief, really, because I had worked so hard for that moment and just didn’t expect it.”

As far as competitive gymnastics, Spear said that winning an individual championship on floor might just be her career’s finale. “What I’m doing now is putting everything into coaching…Teaching them how to love gymnastics and hoping that they carry it with them,” she said, noting that it allows her to participate in and give back to the sport without putting so much stress on her body.

Now entering her senior year of high school, Spear said she plans to study sports psychology, hoping to eventually pursue a masters in the field.