Hampton teen quickly climbing gymnastics ladder

By: John Grupp
Sunday, July 14, 2024 | 5:07 PM

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Hampton teen Ella Lattimore enjoyed gymnastics long before she became any good at it.

“It definitely took some time,” she said. “I really liked to do it, but I wasn’t very good. I just kind of showed up at the competitions, I did OK, and I left.”

Now she leaves the gym as one of the best.

Since being introduced to the sport at age 6, Lattimore has overcome some early doubts and struggles and climbed the ranks to become an accomplished all-around gymnast.

Lattimore, a 15-year-old rising sophomore at Hampton, competed at Level 9 nationals in May and is training this season at Level 10, the highest level a gymnast can achieve before elite, or Olympic, level.

“(Level 10) is just a step up for all of the difficulty of the skills,” Lattimore said. “I’m excited.”

Level 10 once seemed like an unreachable goal for Lattimore, who trains at Jewart’s Gymnastics in Hampton and is a member of the Pittsburgh Northstars.

She “always had a lot of energy” as a youngster, prompting her parents to enroll her in dance. That didn’t last. “I did not like it. I just couldn’t concentrate. It was too slow-paced for me.”

Next came gymnastics, which also had a hard time holding Lattimore’s focus.

“I was getting a little bit bored at the very beginning and I almost quit,” she said. “But I had this coach (Dana Thomas) that I loved a lot and she really pushed us. That was my favorite part.”

The passion was there, but not the results.

As a 10-year-old, she finished tied for 50th at the 2019 Level 4 Pennsylvania championships. A year later, covid hit. Lattimore continued to train during the shutdowns — “I worked out in my basement every single day” — and emerged as a new, confident gymnast. In the spring of 2021, she placed second at the state championships, at Level 7, as a sixth-grader.

“I was like, ‘Wow. This is amazing,’ ” she said.

Under the guidance of Jewart’s coaches Lainy Carslaw and Katie Hilko, Lattimore entered this past season with an eye on reaching nationals. She won the uneven bars and the all-around at the California Classic in January in Temecula, Calif., and placed second all-around at both the Charleston (S.C.) Cup in February, winning uneven bars, and the Kalihari Luau (Ohio) Invitational in March, winning the floor exercise.

She finished fourth at the Pennsylvania Level 8-10 championships and then punched her ticket to nationals by placing fourth at the 2024 Region 7 Level 9 championships in April at State College.

Competing against some of the best gymnasts from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia, the 5-foot-1, 110-pound Lattimore scored a Level 9 personal-best 37.425 all-around score.

“She needed to have the meet of her life to make nationals, and she did,” Carslaw said. “That says so much about her. Her age group was very competitive. She needed to be nearly perfect and she had all this pressure on her, and she came through in every way.”

At nationals May 2-5 in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Lattimore placed 14th all-around out of 29 gymnasts in her age group.

Because Hampton doesn’t sponsor a gymnastics team, Lattimore competes at North Hills meets as an independent. As a freshman, she took seventh out of 19 gymnasts in the advanced division at the 2024 WPIAL individual championships in February with an all-around score of 36.625. She placed third on the beam (9.20) and fifth on the bars (9.20).

“She’s definitely on the right track,” Carslaw said. “Any college would be so lucky to have her. Sometimes I feel like she’s not a real person. She is just the bravest, nicest, sweetest (girl). I’ve been doing this a long time — working on 25 years — and she is just special in every single way. Everyone will tell you the same thing.”

Lattimore trains about 20 hours a week during the summer and in early July pulled off her first “Tkatchev” on the uneven bars. It’s a tricky maneuver, a single bar release where the gymnast goes over the bar and catches it, and Lattimore nailed it for the first time.

Carslaw recalled the proud moment.

“At the same time she caught it, she whacked her heel off the bar without her heel pads on,” Carslaw said. “Typical Ella, instead of crying or complaining, she just had the biggest smile on her face.”

Tags: Hampton