Flach’s Six

HUDSON — Flach’s Gymnastics have entered its offseason and with that comes camp days during the summer and specific ones to hone skills in preparation for contest season, which starts again in November.

Six of the academy’s top gymnasts are fresh off a successful showing at the 2018 Level 5/6 New York State Championships at St. Joseph’s College in late April. Five of the six gymnasts medaled with Alison Flint winning the New York state Level 6 vaulting championship.

“It hit us right at home, it was awesome. There aren’t many other words we can use to describe it, we were just really excited for them,” coach Jaime Flach said. “They accomplished their own goals. They all had goals going in and it is really hard to medal at states, you have to place in the top seven. Every single one of them got medals somewhere and then we also had a vaulting champion, so then we’re just over the moon.”

Flach’s six are Flint, Molly Clickman, Makayla Kudlack, Lolana Hughes, Emily Allen and Carly Spencer. The team practices 14-16 hours a week and have to be at Flach’s Gymnastics center on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Each gymnast has been involved in the sport for five years, continually moving up levels and now are training at level 7 and 8.

“I saw the older kids doing it and I thought it was pretty cool, especially in the Olympics,” Clickman said on why she wanted to be a gymnast.

Clickman competes in all four events: floor, vault, bars and beam, but she believes she is at her best doing her floor routine.

Although Clickman did not medal at the state championships, Flach attests that her best event is the floor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t her day at the championships.

“It takes a lot of time, I’ve been training in Level 6 for about a year now, so it takes a long time to get ready,” Clickman said.

For the young gymnast, her favorite parts about being on the team are the bonding exercises and just having her teammates’ support. However, for Clickman, she plans on retiring because she will be going into high school next year.

Though she’ll be ending her gymnastics career, she plans on playing volleyball and track at the high school level.

Flach’s gymnastics will also be losing Hughes, who plans on retiring because she’ll also be entering high school.

“Lola has been with us for about four years and some kids have determined it is time for them to retire. For us it is sad, but we understand it, there comes that time,” Flach said. “She has represented our gym, she has represented herself. Lola is nothing but a first-class athlete and she works really hard.”

Like Clickman, Hughes got her interest in gymnastics from watching the Olympics. The young gymnast competes in all four events with beam being her favorite.

At the state championship meet, Hughes placed sixth in floor.

“It was pretty fun, it was one of the best experiences,” she said. “It was harder competing against other girls because it was a bigger meet and usually the meets are smaller, so you place better. Even though I didn’t place well, it was really fun.”

Despite Hughes ending her gymnastics career, she plans on playing sports in high school.

For the remaining four gymnasts, Flint, Kudlack, Allen, and Spencer, they’re preparing to hone their skills for the upcoming competition year.

For Flint, her state championship banner hangs from the wall as she prepares to repeat as a vaulting champion in 2019.

“It feels really cool because it lets me know that I worked really hard to earn it and get to where I got,” Flint said.

Her career initially started at KJs Gymnastics, however, she moved to Flach’s, learned new skills and has enjoyed her time with the team.

Flint competes in all four events, but bars happens to be her favorite because she enjoys swinging through the air.

For Makayla Kudlack, who placed fourth in floor, her career started differently than her teammates’. Kudlack started as a dancer. She came to Flach’s with a friend for a “Bring a Friend to Gymnastics Day.” She became enamored with the sport and had to make the choice between dance and gymnastics.

Although she said it was a hard decision, Kudlack chose gymnastics and has loved it ever since.

“I like the hard work and I like the inspiration because I want to be like Simone Biles one day,” she said.

Like Flint, Kudlack’s favorite event is the bars because she enjoys swinging and doing giants. Her goal is to one day make it to the Olympics and follow in the footsteps of her hero Biles, who is an Olympic Gold Medalist.

For Allen, her gymnastics career started when her grandmother signed her up for the sport because she was constantly flipping, doing cartwheels and handstands at home.

At the state championships, Allen placed seventh on the bars, however, her favorite event is floor.

“For me, it is because it is the most fun and I just like having fun with it,” she said. “With the other events, I’m kind of nervous and it is not as flowing.”

Allen’s favorite aspects of gymnastics is learning all of the new skills that come with the sport and moving up levels, in addition to having fun with her teammates every day at practice.

Spencer brings the energy and vibrance of the Flach’s Six.

At the state championships, Spencer placed seventh in vault and bars.

“States is always fun, it was my second state competition and going into it I wasn’t as nervous as I was the first time, but definitely it was nerve-racking. It is really exciting going there because the competition really excites me,” Spencer said. “I love going out to compete and I like to strive to be the best, but states, overall is so fun. It is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”

Spencer has been practicing for five years and competes in all four events with her favorite being the beam.

With the years of experience Spencer has, she understands just how hard it is to perfect what she and her teammates must in order to compete at the state championship level.

“It takes a pretty long time because not only do you have to be physically prepared, but you have to be mentally prepared to do bigger skills. So the higher you go up in levels, the longer it is going to take,” she said. “Like learning a double back will take six months to perfect. You’re not going to get it right away like a cartwheel or a handstand, so it genuinely takes longer, the longer you grow in gymnastics.”

With that, the best advice Spencer wants to give to the younger gymnasts out there who want to follow in her footsteps is to “keep trying and never give up.”

For Flach and her six gymnasts, she’s incredibly proud of how far they’ve come in order to represent Flach’s Gymnastics well at the state championships.

“They’ve improved their work ethic over the years and their understanding of the sport of gymnastics, and the proper progressions and steps it takes to gain a new skill and or the type of dedication you have to have in order to be a medalist at states,” she said.

Level seven and eight skills include double backflips and release elements on the bars. Although the gymnasts have some of the skills already, there are still others they need for level eight. The group expects to see an increase in practice hours and extra camp days in the summer to hone their skills.

For Flach, there will be girls that come and go through the program and over time there will be a new group like the current one, but for the original six, they will always hold a special place with Flach.

“I’ve cried a lot because you form a bond with them. They sometimes don’t even call me Ms. Jaime, they call me Aunt Jaime,” she said. “We are an extended family and then we are family. I think that the pride that I take is really how far they carry this after they’re gone from the gym — where they succeed in their personal lives when they graduate school, the work ethic that they have learned here and that they carry on beyond here and into their adult life. That’s where I take pride. You can have medals and you can have wins. It is fun and it is all great and you are super proud, but there are so many more life lessons that they learn doing a competition program for gymnastics that maybe they never would have gotten if they weren’t in gymnastics.”