North Allegheny junior Hannah Seidl tried all kinds of sports and activities when she was younger.
But only one turned her world upside down.
Seidl has grown from a novice tumbler to a Level 10 gymnast with her sights set on qualifying for nationals.
“My mom stuck me in the little-kid classes, and I really liked it,” she said. “I chose it over everything else I’ve tried. I liked the feeling of when you would flip, being upside down. It was always so fun, and it was something different. Nothing else could quite compare to it.”
Seidl capped her high school season by finishing fourth at the WPIAL gymnastics championships Feb. 7 at Moon with an all-around score of 36.50. She placed third on the beam (9.325) and fourth on the vault (9.5).
“Hannah is an all-around competitor,” North Allegheny coach Nicole Bova said. “She is a high-level gymnast in club and that helps with high school scoring.”
Senior Sarah Patterson, the reigning WPIAL champion in floor exercise, finished third in the floor (9.425), and junior Caroline DiRenzo placed 11th overall as the Section 1 champion Tigers (8-1) took third in team scoring behind defending champion Thomas Jefferson and Central Valley.
The next goal for Seidl, who also trains with the Pittsburgh Northstars out of Jewart’s Gymnastics, is to reach nationals for the first time. The path begins at the Pennsylvania Level 8-10 championships March 27-29 at Lewisburg, where she will need an all-around score of at least 35.0 to qualify for the Region 7 meet April 9-12 in Virginia Beach, Va.
From there, the top seven finishers advance to the national championships May 6-10 at Oklahoma City, Okla.
Seidl, competing at Level 9, placed 12th at regionals last year, missing nationals by less than a point.
“I did a lot of training over the summer,” Seidl said, “trying to improve the skills that I have and also get new skills.”
Seidl began gymnastics when she was 4. She is now a Level 10 gymnast, the highest level before the Elite, or Olympic, level. She is the only Level 10 gymnast on the North Allegheny roster and one of fewer than a dozen competing in the WPIAL.
“It’s crazy to think I’m at the highest level now,” Seidl said. “It was like it was unreachable (when I was younger). I remember watching all those older girls and thinking, ‘Wow, imagine being able to do that one day.’ ”
It hasn’t come easily. The 5-foot-3 Seidl, who is looking at Kent State and New Hampshire, trains for about 3.5 hours a day, five days a week, year-round.
“You have to go in with a positive mindset, and that really helps you grow,” Seidl said. “You have to do the same thing over and over again and work on perfecting it.”
Seidl comes from an athletic family. Her father, Carl, was a football-baseball standout at Shaler in the mid-1990s. Her mom, Bethany, grew up as a recreational swimmer, and her twin brother, Kyle, qualified for the WPIAL Class 3A golf tournament this past fall.
“Hannah has a great personality,” Bova said. “She is super positive. She is always smiling. And that’s outside of gymnastics. As far as gymnastics, she is really consistent on vault. She is one of our top scorers in floor as well. If she hits her beam routine, her (all-around) score is up there.”
Seidl’s specialty is the vault, the most unforgiving, all-or-nothing event in gymnastics. She went undefeated in the regular season, scoring at least 9.4 in every meet. She also posted meet-high scores in the beam, floor exercises and uneven bars.
Not too bad for a former wide-eyed novice gymnast.
“I would have some rough meets or some rough practices, but I would come right back in the next day and keep going,” she said. “I would try new things. Nothing really stopped me.”