Naomi Visser had quite a successful season as a first-year senior in 2018, making the AA final at the World Championships. She hasn’t competed yet in 2019, as she’s been preparing for final exams in order to graduate high school. She said to The Force is Grace that is currently training for the Flanders Team Challenge and European Games:
“I haven’t competed the previous months, but I’ve been training hard for upcoming competitions. I want to bring a more difficult program there. I hope to have my upgrades at the Flanders Team Challenge in June. Two weeks later it’s Dutch Nationals and then we leave for Minsk the next Monday. I have exams coming up, so that’s keeping me very busy. It’s the second half of my HAVO finals. Last year I already did math, M&O, and English. Now it’s the rest of the subjects.” [HAVO is a type of secondary school. M&O is management & organization]
Having her first competition in June meant the past few months were relatively quiet:
“At the start of the year, the team sat down together with coach Gerben Wiersma to divide all the competitions in the preseason. We decided together that I would go to the European Games because it was easier to combine with my schoolwork. That was nice because it gave me the chance to upgrade and become consistent. But now I’m really looking forward to competing. On bars, I’m training a Pak salto to Shaposhnikova with a half twist, and on floor, I want to do a triple twist to punch front. I’m also adding some smaller upgrades on beam. I keep training more and more of my competition routines. It’s going well and I’m doing all I can to have the best possible performance in Minsk. After European Games, I’ll be focussing on Worlds. My first goal is to be selected for the Worlds training squad.”
Translation from Dutch by Elisabeth
