SEC Gymnasts Pushing Their Bodies to the Limit

It's no secret that Division I athletes are some of the toughest students among the college student population. Between their vigorous schedules, multitude of practices, games, and team lifts, these athletes are basically military cadets training for war. Okay well not war, but pretty darn close.

More specifically, let's talk about gymnasts. Gymnastics is a huge part of the olympics, and has been for many, many years. What's understood is that gymnastics requires mentally and physically strong athletes.

These men and women throw themselves across bars, flip on a 6 inch wide beam, choreograph a whole routine, and push their bodies to almost their absolute limit. I'm not saying they are the toughest athletes in sports, but they sure as heck are apart of the top five most resilient.

Let's talk about the SEC conference. Everyone knows that the SEC conference produces some fantastic athletes, literally some of the best in the country. Currently, Florida, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky are the top 5 in the SEC conference, and 8 SEC teams named in the top 25 in the top gymnastic colleges in America.

With that being said, what does it take to be one of these fantastic gymnasts? I mean, I personally only played softball at the Division II level, and just has provided long term physical and mental affects. I can only imagine being a Division I gymnast at a school such as University of Florida, or Alabama.

Let's take a look at some of the top athletes, Mackenzie Caquatto and Alaina Johnson

at University of Florida, Kaleigh Dickson and Sarie Morrison from LSU, Cat Hires, Kaylan Earls and Lindsey Cheek from Georgia, Kayla Hartley, Shelby Hilton, Shannon Mitchell and Sara Shipley from Kentucky. I could go on and on about the amount of top athletes in the sec program in gymnastics.

These athletes are producing olympic qualifying scores left and right. Caquatto was a nine-time All-American, Johnson, 16-Time All-American, Dickson, Second-Team Regular Season All-American, Morrison, First-Team Regular Season All-American and 2014 Second-Team Regular Season All-American, Mitchell, 2014 All-SEC Team. I think I've made my point.

The SEC conference has produced some fantastic Olympians, and how? Well that's what I'd like to know. I can only imagine the intense effort that these athletes must exert at every single practice, team lift, and event.

Regardless of how, their scores clearly show that the SEC conference has got some military cadets in there somewhere training these athletes, and I for one am not upset about it.