London 2012: Olympic hopeful Rosie MacLennan learned to trampoline as a kid sister
Like the youngest in many families, Rosie MacLennan often tagged along for the ride.
With an older sister and two big brothers who were enrolled in a lot of activities, the King City native regularly found herself in gymnasiums, at swimming pools, and in other locations not of her own choosing.
And, like many babies in the family, she wasn’t fond of the sidelines.
“All of us were in lots of activities as kids, anything my parents could think of that was slightly unconventional, and they always found a way to include me,” says MacLennan, rhyming off a laundry list of early exploits from plunging into the pool as an infant, being on water-skis at age 2 and bouncing around the gym while her older siblings did more sophisticated routines.
“I always just wanted to do it, whatever it was,” she says. “And, if I couldn’t, my mom would always just find a way so that I could.”
MacLennan, now a 23-year-old Olympian, Pan Am Games gold medallist and three-time Canadian champion in trampoline, got her start in the sport the way she did with most others — accompanying her older siblings.
“I went to their first lesson because my mom couldn’t find a babysitter,” MacLennan says of her debut on the mats at 7, which came after her parents decided to have the kids try something new when gymnastics was getting too competitive for the older ones. “So, we all just had a family class.”