DU freshman Annamarie Maaranen became the first Finnish athlete in 44 years to qualify as a gymnast to the Olympic Games. She enrolled as a freshman at DU this fall and will compete for the Pioneers beginning with the 2008 season. This is her story.
On the last day of June I received a phone call that changed my life. Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart, the head coach of DU gymnastics team called me asking if I would be interested in joining their team. For a few days I received many offers from other Universities and it made me feel a little overwhelmed; it was only a few days prior that I was about to lose my hope of getting a scholarship and now there was a huge decision to make! A week later Nilson Savage, one of DU's assistant coaches, came to Finland to meet me and introduce DU to me and my family. After a long and careful consideration about which of the offers to accept, I choose Denver. I have been asked many times what the factors that led to this decision were, but it is impossible to pick any single reason; it was the totality, a combination of many good things.
There was a lot of paperwork and travelling ahead before I dared to move my thoughts to Denver. The two months that followed the phone call were really busy, I had a training camp in Belgium, two qualification competitions, World Universiade games at Bangkok, a national team camp and World Championships at Stuttgart, and not much time to spend at home. When I had done my job at Worlds I flied home for a day to say goodbye to my family and friends and begin my journey towards the unknown. I had been in the USA only once before, seven years ago in California, I knew hardly anything about the school, campus, team, coaches or anything that was waiting for me. My friends kept asking me if was I scared at all, but actually I wasn’t... I was excited and ready to totally change my life. I have always loved changes, challenges and meeting new people, and I got exactly what I wanted.
Now I have been living here almost a month and I love this place! We almost never say in Finland we love somebody or something if we really don’t mean it, but I’m not at Finland anymore, so I can use that wordJ. Someone would think it’s weird, but I am not homesick at all. My team and all the people around me have made me feel like I was home; actually this is my home now. Whatever the reasons for choosing to move to Denver were, those doesn’t matter anymore; now I’m here and I’m happy.
