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My Carolina Experience: Courtney Bumpers
July 27, 2016 | Women's Gymnastics
My Carolina Experience: Courtney Bumpers
By Zoya Johnson, GoHeels.com
Courtney Bumpers was a gymnast from birth, climbing out of the crib regularly at two years old and onto anything she could manage. So, to get rid of some of that energy her mother signed her up for a “mommy and me” gymnastics class and she fell in love with the sport. She quickly outgrew her gym in Long Island and then the facility after that as well.
“I always knew I wanted to compete in college gymnastics. The Olympics were of course a great goal to aspire to, but for me I always had a focus on college gymnastics because I really wanted to get the education. I was in one of the first TOPS groups, which is like a developmental program for Elite bound kids. When I made it they told my parents only seven girls make it to the Olympics so it's still really important to focus on college, it was important to me ever since.
“I lived in Buffalo until I was 11 and then I trained at the Atlanta School of Gymnastics. When I was in high school in my freshman through junior year I competed on the high school gymnastics team which was a lot of fun because I got be a part of a team. That experience made me want to be a part of college gymnastics.”
Because of Bumpers' goals for collegiate gymnastics she had offers from schools that were very prestigious but not as competitive as she would have liked, and others that were very competitive but not as academically challenging as she would have liked. Carolina had the best of both worlds, and when she met head coach Derek Galvin and her future teammates, all of it clicked.
Bumpers didn't set out to be an All-America or a national champion but she did have goals of getting a perfect 10 and competing flawless routines, so she focused on the little things on a daily basis that would help her get there.
“My goal was always just to be better. I didn't even know how to be an All-America until I placed fourth at nationals in my freshman year and someone explained to me what that meant. Sometimes it's better when you just allow things to happen that way.”
In her sophomore year Bumpers tied for the national title on floor exercise with University of Alabama gymnast Ashley Miles, scoring a 9.9375. She had a title but as a gymnast, unless it's perfect there is always work to be done, so she worked, and set new goals. The next year, Bumpers returned to NCAAs for her third straight event finals as an individual. They had just instituted the new six-judge panel, she had new music, and a new routine.
“It was hard being alone, especially my sophomore and junior years because we missed going as a team by a very small margin, and those teams deserved to have gone to nationals. But there definitely were people there who were cheering for me and supporting me.
“You have some competitions where you're just in the zone, and everything comes together: your training, your hard work, the hard work that your coaches and your teammates helped put in to help you do well, knowing you've done gymnastics since you were two or three, all of that just comes together at one moment, and you just hope that it's in the National Championship.” For Bumpers her goal of a flawless routine was fulfilled at that meet, and that routine is still the only perfect 10 since the panel change.
Academically Bumpers was deciding between medicine and law. “My goal was to do well enough in environmental sciences to do environmental law. That goal changed to making good grades so I could go to law school when I realized environmental science really wasn't for me.”
She continued to work on her goals and after law school Bumpers became an attorney at a law firm focusing on white-collar crime, and an Assistant United States Attorney in North Carolina. She is currently an attorney at a law firm in Nashville, Tenn. In 2014, she was also named a Tar Heel Trailblazer for all of her accomplishments.
“Socially, I didn't really have any major goals outside of making great friends, and I made some amazing friends who were in my wedding and whose weddings I will be in. Having that connection even now a decade later means the world to me. You might have these huge goals of making a 4.0, or getting into grad school, or getting a perfect 10, but sometime you just need to focus on every day just being a little better because these things take time they don't just happen quickly. I would say in everything you do, work hard and put in the effort and you'll get there, just try to better yourself.
“Being surrounded by people with good character who are hardworking during such formative years of your life is something that is very important. Everybody on that team is really a special group of women, they have goals and go on to do great things and I think when you're surrounded with people like that it's going to shape your character and it's going to shape it in a good way. You really bleed that Carolina blue, and everywhere you go you find Carolina alumni and it's something special that you can tell not very many, if any other schools really have.”