When sophomore Madden Shelley quit competing in artistic gymnastics after his senior year of high school, he thought he’d never come back. He dedicated over a decade to training and competition and earned many achievements along the way: By middle school, he qualified for junior nationals, and by his first year of high school, he reached level 10 to attain the highest level in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympics Program. At one point, following the Nationals meet early in high school, he was expected to be among the top 10 in the country.
After a series of injuries during his sophomore and junior seasons, Shelley decided it was best to stop competing. He stayed involved by coaching younger and newer athletes and found a passion for helping others, rather than receiving personal accolades.
“I really found just the love of doing it for doing it, not the love of doing it for a trophy,” Shelley said. “Every time I help someone in gymnastics, I feel like I’m giving back a lot of the joy of what gymnastics gave me.”
Within the first few weeks of college, he found himself back on the gym floor after finding Vanderbilt Club Gymnastics at the student organizations’ fair. He bonded with fellow members of the club team and returned to the events and training he was so familiar with. At the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs Nationals meet in April, Shelley placed first in five of his six events and received the highest all-around score across all levels of the over 160 athletes in his category.
While he trained hard to achieve personal success, he worked even harder to build male representation in the Vanderbilt Club Gymnastics competition team. He focused on supporting his teammates as they developed in the sport.
“At practice he ends up helping other people learn new skills or help coach them, even though he’s the only one that’s competing at Nationals and competing at the highest level,” former president of Vanderbilt Club Gymnastics Grace Jones, a senior, said. “He would make sure that anybody that was coming into practice was taken care of and would feel welcomed in that environment.”
During one practice, Shelley worked with teammate and friend Kasey Kautz on a particularly challenging skill, a giant, from preparation to execution.
“I was struggling a lot with it, and he ended up staying the whole two hours to help me practice it,” Kautz said. “I ended up being able to get it all by myself, and it was completely from Madden.”
For Shelley, coaching and assisting others is not only a way of helping the team improve; it’s also a way of giving back to the sport.
“It’s those sort of moments that make you realize why you coach,” Shelley said. “It’s because you want other people to experience the same joy you take from the sport.”
Due to prolonged periods of injury throughout his career, Shelley is very intentional about how he practices. This way of practicing allows him to help more people and contribute to the team.
“I know at times the injury would flare up [because] it’s not 100% healed, but he was definitely smart in how he practiced,” Jones said. “He was very strategic in how he trained, and that also allowed him to have time to help other people and coach them as well.”
In the gym at which he trained for most of his career, Shelley recalled that many of the athletes and coaches had a high-intensity, sometimes harmful mindset. In continuing his involvement in the sport at the collegiate club level, he said he hopes to make gymnastics more inclusive and welcoming.
“I’ve seen the bad sides of gymnastics. I’ve seen the reality of what it means to be an athlete at such a high level,” Shelley said. “I want gymnastics to be a place where people can experience that joy that I experienced, but they don’t have that harsh, negative side of it.”
And while Shelley’s passion for helping others is largely exercised on the gymnastics floor, it also extends into his entire life.
“I think the thing that probably makes me happiest is helping other people,” Shelley said. “That’s something I try to keep with me every day. I try to think how can I make someone happy, how can I help someone.”
