ST. PETERS, Mo. — There’s a 12-year-old standout gymnast who's turning heads. After placing top 50 in the national Tops Diamond Team for gymnastics, the young girl from St. Peters has her sights on one day reaching gold.
Behind the professional skill and form is a little girl with a soft voice.
"Seven years,” Mia-Marie Davis said in her usual innocent voice.
That's how long she’s been a gymnast -- and she's exceptional.
To put it in perspective, she is what you call a Level 8.
That's the goal for an average high schooler. But Davis is on track to be a Level 10 by the time she becomes a freshman.
"Go Mia. Go Mia. Do it Mia,” a group of her peers yelled as she took the platform at the All American Gymnastics and Super Ninja facility in Overland.
It's not just the support of her teammates that pulls her through, but it's also the training she gets there. Mia-Marie trains year-round, only taking a break three weeks in the year.
"I believe in a lot of positive. Everything we say to these kids, we give them a positive with a correction. The negative 'no you didn’t do that right' doesn't work and that's where I find the success in these girls,” said Director Sue Renshaw.
Mia-Marie is the only Level 8 currently at the gym.
She works out 16 to 20 hours a week.
"I don't think that I have a star. I think that I have a hard worker,” her mother Megan Davis said.
She remembers signing Mia-Marie up for dance lessons at 5 years old, only to quickly learn she had a path of her own.
"She had on tap shoes and a ballerina outfit, and she said it was so boring that she had to make it better. I said, ‘You cannot wear those shoes around the house.’ She laid a broom out across the floor and did a one-handed cartwheel in her tap shoes over the broom and said ‘ta-da!’" her mother recalled.
The shining star said she has a goal in mind.
“To go to the Olympic Trials,” she said quietly.
With the discipline and patience she willingly invests, her goal is in crystal clear view.
This year, Mia-Marie placed second all-around at regionals in Iowa.