Robbinsville resident Harriette Murtland performs the balance beam. Murtland finished 21st at Eastern Nationals May 6, 2015.
One of the toughest athletes in the Robbinsville school district doesn’t wear shoulder pads and a helmet; doesn’t don a singlet and work out in a heated wrestling room trying to cut weight; and doesn’t skate around the ice slamming bodies into the boards.
No, she flips, dances and tumbles. And if that doesn’t sound tough, you don’t know Harriette Murtland.
On March 27, the Pond Road Middle School 8th grader represented the Arena Gymnastics team at the 2015 New Jersey Level 9 State Championships, and finished seventh to qualify for the Region 7 championships on April 17. She finished among the top seven competitors there as well, which qualified her for the Eastern Nationals Level 9 Championship on May 6.
And she did it all with a broken toe on her right foot.
For those who feel that’s a minor issue, go just stub your toe, and then try to push off with it and do exercises in a sharp, regimented manner. Imagine that discomfort, but 100 times more intense.
“Coming back from my broken toe was one of the hardest things I had to do,” Murtland said.
One of the reasons, is she did not have proper time to let it heal. But considering the fact that in February 2014, her season ended abruptly when she sustained a fracture in the growth plate of her hip (a common gymnastics injury), Murtland was determined to come back this year.
It wasn’t easy.
After working feverishly through last summer to prepare for 2015 competition, she suffered another rash of injuries entering competition. The final, and most critical, occurred one week before the New Jersey meet. Murtland broke her toe while practicing her series on the balance beam.
“We thought that was the end of her season,” said her mom, Felicity Murtland.
So did Murtland, who was beginning to feel like a human punching bag.
“I knew right when I felt a sharp pain in my toe that my season would be over,” the 14-year-old said. “It is really difficult to bounce back into competing after an injury, especially when the competition is only a couple weeks away.
“I had just recovered from a stress fracture in my elbow, a contusion in my foot and now I broke my toe. I was really upset because I thought I would have an injury free year since I had already missed last season. Even my teachers said I would show up each week with crutches or a new injury.”
Each time she would bounce back, but the constant setbacks were beginning to get to Murtland. She admitted to wanting to give up at one point.
“I was so tired of having to rebuild all my skills again while everyone else kept improving,” she said. “I thought that I would have to stop mid-season like last year. It was heartbreaking. I trained all summer and worked really hard to get to level 9, adding new skills. I felt that I’d missed almost my whole level 8 season and after getting through all those tough practices and investing so much time and effort, that it was all thrown away with nothing to show for it. “
In the end, though, her competitive juices won out. Murtland fought the urges to quit and went back to work. Under normal circumstances, she would take a few weeks off to let the toe heal. But if she was unable to compete in the state meet, that would automatically kill her chances at regional and national competition.
Thus, she combined a mental and physical toughness, reaching down deep the way special athletes do. Needless to say there were some tough moments.
“I had a deadline, and it all depended on how I tackled the recovery if I was going to make it or not,” Murtland said. “Every step I took, a pain would shoot through my toe and foot, and I needed to start running and tumbling on it soon. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown and thought I could never recover quick enough.”
The Arena coaching staff, however, worked with Murtland as they lightened up her skills to take pressure off the toe. They would not push her if the pain became too intense. But they had to walk a fine line, for if the skills became too mundane, Murtland would score low in her meets since much of the judging is based on degree of difficulty.
When the time came, she never got an official “green light” to compete in states.
“I wasn’t exactly told I was allowed to compete,” Murtland said. “My doctor understood my situation and said that if I started to do things again it would be very painful, and it would heal very slowly. That was a risk I was willing to take.”
It became well worth it, as Murtland was seventh in all-around with a score of 36.700. She took 21st on vault (8.950), tied for third on bars (9.300), tied for ninth on beam (9.150) and seventh on floor (9.300). The top seven finishers qualified for the Region championships.
“The coaching team at Arena did wonders to simplify her routines with the goal of competing and not winning,” Felicity said. “It was a big surprise when she made the Regional team, which was her goal for the year. Mentally, the season was exhausting for Harriette, with constantly working to get back from injury. So to make the Regional team with the odds against her was a huge accomplishment.”
It just got better from there. At the Jr6 Level 9 Regional, going against competition from six states and Washington, D.C. at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, Murtland again advanced with a seventh-place all-around score of 36.625. Once again, the top seven advanced.
Harriette was 12th on vault (9.125), ninth on bars (9.250), 13th on beam (8.900) and seventh on floor (9.350). She did all that while still dealing with toe issues, but managed to ignore the discomfort.
“I wasn’t concerned about my toe as I was focused on competing to the best of my ability,” Murtland said. “Even though the adrenaline kicked in, I took pain killers and had my toe strapped. It was still painful when competing at Easterns. I just had to block out the pain and focus on my events.”
At the Eastern Nationals, she finished 21st overall with an all-around score of 35.75, getting 29th on vault (8.600), 17th on bars (9.00), 14th on beam (8.975) and tied for 23rd on floor (9.000). At that point, just being there was a prize in itself.
“For Eastern Nationals, I was able to add back in my skills but I hadn’t enough time to perfect them,” Murtland said. “I didn’t think that I would make it to Nationals. When I qualified for the Region 7 team and found out I would be competing at Nationals I was shocked. I thought the best I would get would be an alternate and would never make the team in my first year, especially with an injury.”
Her success is certainly a feel-good story despite the fact Murtland felt miserable battling all the pain. But gymnastics have been part of her life since she can remember, and the love affair is still intense.
Felicity signed her daughter and some friends up for The Little Gym in West Windsor at age 3 “for social reasons and exercise. She constantly practiced cartwheels at home until she mastered it.”
Murtland said she can’t recall much from those days but does remember having fun with her friends and being a little scared of the beam. She would watch gymnasts on TV “who were able to do many cool tricks and I believed that if I kept doing this sport one day I would be able to do everything just like them.”
At age 7, she was asked to join the The Little Gym competition team and “we just went along with it as she was having fun,” Felicity said. By age 9, Harriette’s parents moved her to the renowned Gymland in Hamilton, which houses the Arena team and is for gymnasts who want serious competition.
“At this point, the friends that I used to go to Little Gym with found their own interests and stopped doing gymnastics,” Murtland said. “My motivations changed from having fun with my friends to having fun doing a sport that I enjoyed.”
But Felicity and Martin Murtland are not like those crazy, driven gymnastics parents that you hear about who push their kids to the limit in hopes of reaching the Olympics.
“She knows she can stop gymnastics at any time,” Felicity said. “We have told her, ‘The day you stop enjoying gymnastics and having fun is the day you should stop.’”
So far, the fun is still there for Murtland, who had to decide at an early age between focusing on ice skating or gymnastics.
“Harriette was very athletic at an early age and had very good hand eye coordination,” Martin said. “She could have played most sports but she just seemed to gravitate towards gymnastics as her thing.”
That has been made apparent over and over again. Aside from what she accomplished the past three months, her picture hangs on the Gymland “Wall of Fame,” which is reserved for all-Around NJ State Champions. She has accomplished that feat three times.
Felicity feels the sport has taught her daughter many life lessons, such as the importance of time management. She is successful outside of the gym as well, as Murtland is a Principal’s Honor Roll student at Pond Road and was selected to participate in the People to People Leadership Program in Washington.
Gymnastics, of course, still looms large in her life.
“I love gymnastics because of the fun and the competitive environment I can have with my teammates who are more like family to me,” Murtland said. “Gymnastics is an important part of me. I plan on sticking with my passion for gymnastics throughout high school and I aspire one day to do college gymnastics.”
What may be most impressive about Murtland is the sense of humor she has maintained toward her recent health woes, as she says “Hopefully in the future I’d like to coach gymnastics and become a physical therapist. After all, I have a good understanding of what a physical therapist does!”
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