Eighteen-year-old gymnast Christina Desiderio says competing at the 2016 Olympic trials after earning a spot twice on the U.S. national team was by far the highlight of her career. “19,000 people, not a seat empty! Two days that I will never forget,” she says. “I worked for 10 years of my life to try to make it to the 2016 Olympics,” she says. “That didn’t happen, but I got as close to my dream as I possibly could and I was so proud of myself! I worked so hard and even though I didn’t make it to my end goal, I still believe that all my hard work paid off.”

Desiderio is now a student at Louisiana State University, whose team placed fourth at the 2018 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships. Her goal is for the team to win a national championship. “We’re all working very hard toward that,” she says. But for a few months after the Olympic trials, Desiderio says, she didn’t know what she wanted to do.