By Christopher Tremblay, Staff Sports Writer

Gymnastics is a sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, artistry and endurance designed to develop strength and coordination. Individuals perform optional and prescribed acrobatic feats mostly on special apparatus in order to demonstrate strength, balance, and body control.

Holliston’s Greta Wolfgang was a lifetime soccer player when she was first exposed to gymnastics while watching the Olympics. The sport immediately caught her attention and she wanted to further look into it.

“I had only been involved in sports with balls, but after seeing gymnasts, I thought that it was cool,” she said. “All the flipping around they were doing really fascinated me and it was something that I really wanted to give a try.”

Wolfgang got involved with recreational gymnastics and by the age of ten she was participating with Elite Gymnastics on a competitive level. In the early stages of her gymnastics, she got involved with the basics but found that the floor exercise and the vault would become her favorite events. 

“I enjoyed the performing aspect of the floor as it was more complex and allowed you to dance and tumble to music,” she said “The vault was running as fast as you can then jumping and flipping. Gymnastics surprisingly came natural to me.”

In the early days, everyone was doing the same floor routine, but when she was able to move up to the next level she was able to pick out her own music and have a choreographer help with the routine while still having input into it. Wolfgang’s first routine with her choice of music was a medley from the Dream Works movie ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’ 

“Finding the right music was tough. I was sitting in my mother’s office going through music, I had picked out a lot of different music but received a lot of no’s on using it,” Wolfgang said. “Eventually ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ passed.”

Wolfgang’s music tastes have since changed and she is now using a hip-hop medley from DMX for her routines. While the floor exercise involves more complicated skills, the Holliston senior is confident in her abilities.

“You have to tap into what you feel comfortable with and go with that,” she said. “Your body knows where it has to go; when you’re younger, it’s a little more awkward, but you learn about yourself.”

Her other favorite event was the vault and although, as a kid, it was basically vaulting into squishy mats, she has since moved on in the event. She noted that now it’s sprinting toward a table where you have to push yourself off while doing flips and while in the air, you hope for the best. Having done it for so long, she doesn’t even second guess herself anymore, she knows her body will do the rest once she gets into the air. 

In addition to the events she loves taking part in, she also competes in the beam and bars although both are intimidating.

“The beam is daunting but satisfying when you do well. You’re 4 feet high and on a 4-inch-wide beam trying to keep your composure, but when you get through it, it’s a very cool feeling,” Wolfgang said. “The bars and I have a love/hate relationship. It is definitely not my favorite, but I try. Like the beam, if you’re successful it’s a good feeling but there are a lot of scary skills and a lot can go wrong.”

Participating on the Medway-Holliston-Medfield-Millis co-op team, she was once again reunited with Coach Breanna Vacca.

“I had the opportunity to coach her when she first started competing in gymnastics,” the MHMM gymnastics coach said. “Greta is a very strong competitor on both the floor and vault.”

While Wolfgang’s skills shine through for the gymnastics team, so does her compassion for human beings. In 2022, Holliston resident Jacqui Rossini passed away. She was a close friend of Coach Vacca’s and was also a gymnastics judge at many of MHMM’s meets throughout the years.

“When Jacqui passed away two years ago to lung cancer, it was Greta who came to me with the idea of holding a competition in her memory,” Vacca said. “Last year, we had three teams attend and this year it increased to seven teams taking part in the Invitational.”

During the inaugural Invitational in 2024, the squad was able to raise $2,000 for the Dana Farber Institute in Jacqui’s name. This year, keeping with the tropical theme once again (Rossini loved going to Aruba), seven schools decided to participate to celebrate her memory at the Invitational in hopes of eradicating cancer.

Wolfgang knew Rossini as a judge who participated in a lot of the MHMM meets she got to know her in that way, but her death was something that everyone took hard.

 “I knew that Coach Vacca was very close to her and she would occasionally help us out at practice. It was tough when we lost her,” Wolfgang said. “She had done so much for us, and I thought it was only right to give back and honor her with an Invitational.”

This year, the Jacqui Rossini Invitational went to two sessions with three teams participating in the morning and another four in the afternoon. MHMM was able to raise $4,000 this year, doubling last year’s contribution.

With the MHMM season finished, Wolfgang is not in the position to be able to commit to a college where she can take part on the gymnastics team, but she does plan on joining a club team wherever she decides to attend.