SUMMARY
Bobbie-Sue is an elite gymnast competing for a spot on the US Olympic team for London in 2012. In addition to training for the Olympics she is Captain of her beloved West Coast Heroes cheerleading team for cheer for their college San Diego University (SDU). She took over the team two years ago and lead them to back-to-back cheerleading national championships.
She trains relentlessly and empowers everyone around her to reach their peak. As a student at SDU she is currently completing her Bachelors in Physical Education and is a top student graduating at the top of her class in every class she studies. Excellence is a discipline which is nurtured and developed by her and exudes out of every cell of her body.
During the summer months, she runs her Summer Camp called Camp Incredible to teach underprivileged kids about Cheerleading, Gymnastics and Dance. Camp Incredible is one of her biggest passions and she loves to watch children build their self-esteem by accomplishing things they thought impossible. Since setting her mind on GOLD for the Olympics she has taken on a herculean task to compete at age 23 in 2012. She wakes up at 3:15am to train for four hours every single day and shortly will be increasing it to six hours of training a day. She documents everything on her popular show “GOLD: Trials and Tribs of an Olympics Gymnast”
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
* NCAA Cheerleading 1st Place (National Cheerleading Association of America)
* Captain of the West Coast Heroes
* Owner of Camp Incredible
* United World – Young Achievers Award
* United World – Youth Service Award – Diamond Circle
* USA Olympic Nominee – Women’s Artistic Gymnastics
BACKGROUND
Her parents Brinksi and Betanya Noubwounsky were gym instructors living in Sofia, Bulgaria and after defecting in 1977 to the USA they moved first to Missouri and then to Kentucky to escape detection. Changing their names to Brian and Betsy Numbawon they ran a small time gym and got involved in cheerleading. It was into this immigrant family that Bobbie-Sue was born. Her brother Robbie was born a year later. They brought up Bobbie-Sue and Robbie with a love of cheerleading and gymnastics.
At age four her parents moved the family to California as they had been offered to take over a lease on a run-down gymnastics center in Encino, California. When they arrived they saw just what a bad state the gym was in and why it was losing money. It took one year and nearly all their savings to be able to turn it around and start making money.
Bobbie-Sue now got to spend all her time going to the gym and training. She spent every spare moment doing gymnastics, dancing and cheerleading. She and Robbie were incredibly competitive and kept pushing each other harder and harder to excel and perform the most advanced tricks. They both competed in gymnastics at the earliest possibility and quickly rose through the ranks winning medal after medal after medal. She climbed through all the ranks and got to travel as part of junior teams.
By the age of fourteen she hit the Junior Elite and was competing nationally with the likes of Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. She was in serious contention for the Athens Olympics and would have just made the age cutoff and in a sudden bout of irrationality went to show off for her boyfriend in the car park and did a tumbling pass across the grass and came down on a rick and twisted her knee tearing it up so badly she missed the eligibility date for the Olympic trials. She was devastated and heartbroken as was all the sponsors she had accumulated who expected her to be a serious medal contender. Her Olympic dream was shattered.
After spending four months on crutches and after major surgery to repair the knee she could begin training. With Olympic Gold no longer her driving factor she joined the school cheerleading team who had been wishing to get her on board for years. Finally fully healed and back in training she committed to excel at everything she did and to be grounded and never let her emotions cloud her judgement. She graduated with a 4.0 grade average and was the High School Captain of the Encino Eagles where her team won every competition they entered.
Her high school crush Kenny Wynnettall, (son of famed billionaire and adventurer Sir William Wynnettall) who was one year older was offered to be the starting quarterback for SDU so the next year she followed him to San Diego to become part of the SDU’s West Coast Heroes. Within a year she was Captain and the following year she founded ‘Camp Incredible’ summer camp for girls and boys who want to excel at cheerleading and Gymnastics.
At Camp Incredible she teaches the foundations of cheer, gymnastics and dance to future generations when she is not doing charity work with underprivileged kids and using her gifts and talents to inspire, motivate and uplift their spirits and to build self esteem so they can pursue their dreams. She and Kenny are together and spend as much time as they can when he is not travelling with the team and she is not in the gym training and training and training for new techniques and new dance routines for her beloved Heroes. 1-2-3 Go Heroes!!!
After watching Nastia and Shawn win gold in Beijing and hearing of Nastia’s declaration for 2012 and with a fully rehabbed knee she recently committed to train for the 2012 London Olympics. She knows it will be a long, uphill battle to make the US National Team but is convinced with hard work and focus she will be able to make it and proudly represent her beloved USA.
Her routines are coming back quickly as she returns to National Team form and each day is a remembering of skills drilled and drilled into her physiology. She is back training four hours a day and with her high performance coach in her corner she is rapidly acquiring skills and with a new sense of her body and with incredible leg strength she looks forward to being a serious contender for GOLD in 2012.
INTERVIEW
Q: Bobbie-Sue you are such an inspiration what keeps you inspired each day?
A: Thank you for saying that. I love to inspire other people and watch them excel. For me I love to watch myself get better. For most people they have no idea what they can accomplish because they never track their progress. I track everything I do and because I have such a grasp over the details it means I can see the progress I am making. I love to have many ‘Breakthoughs Before Breakfast’. It may be 7-20 breakthroughs. What a way to start a day with 7-20 personal bests.
Q: You talk about achieving Mastery and Elite. What is the difference?
A: Mastery is about hours. Recent studies have talked about 10,000 hours needed to become a master. So in reality Mastery is about Commitment, Excellence, Repetition, Frequency, Intensity and Innovation. You need to put in the hours to achieve Mastery. Masters are committed which means they go for their goal regardless how they feel.
Elite is highest level. You are talking about the top ten in the world. At this commitment is not enough. They must have achieved mastery already but they are Driven to do what they do. Commitment gets you up at 6am to train. Driven gets you up at 3:15am and excited to go and put yourself through a grueling and punishing workout session. Elite also leave a Legacy of their work. They define the sport, the industry or their field of endeavour.
Q: You are so mature at 20 years old now. How do you have balance?
A: Cheerleading keeps me connected to all my friends and the social scene and the side of life that a normal college girl would get. Gymnastics however gave me the mindset of a professional athlete from the age 10 that most others do not acquire until they are adults. I traveled the world as an ambassador of my country at age 12-14. That level of pressure is very intense and some thrive and others crack. I thrived under it and developed a self-discipline and routine that supported my success. So maybe ask me more about balance?
Q: So how do you relax?
A: Great Question. I guess for me relaxing is sitting in the Jacuzzi after a three to five hour workout session. It is teaching skills to kids at my Camp Incredible. It is going snow boarding up at Mammoth. Relaxing for me is also working out at L.A. Fitness. I know if I only pour greatness and excellence into my head that is all that can come out. So do I read magazines? Only those in my field. Do I watch television? Only Biographies of World Leaders.
Q: Do you cook?
A: No. Kenny and I eat out a lot and now I am eating so much more raw food I am finding I like takeout a lot less as well. I have a house cleaner and I have a small apartment that meets my needs because I am rarely there.
Q: Do you have any pet peeves?
A: Mediocrity. I get exasperated around people who are OK with being average, who quit, who sell out on themselves. Life is hard up to 95%. Once you embrace the last 100% and do everything at 100% so much becomes easier. When I find myself in those places I just go to my happy place and celebrate everything that is working in my life and focus on my tasks.
Q: So how was it when Kenny proposed to you?
A: It was so romantic. He had scored eight touchdowns against the Spartans while I was in Paris so he got permission to fly over in Daddy’s private jet. He surprised me and we had dinner by the Seine near the Eiffel Tower and he proposed to me at twilight. I don’t think I could have imagined it more perfectly. It is all captured in the song ‘Hero – Man of my Dreams’ which is one of my favorite songs.
Q: I heard you also write songs now?
A: When I am training I want to hear uplifting, empowering music. My good friend Clinton Swaine started writing music for me such as ‘Golden Dreams’ and ‘Mastery’ to inspire me on my way to GOLD. I was training one day and I grabbed a pen and within 8 minutes I had written down all the lyrics for ‘Excellence – The Quest’ and went back to training. Rick turned it into a song and has also done ‘Commitment – Just One More’ and we more songs coming. It is incredible to workout to such empowering music all the time.
Q: Do you wish you could take back that injury when you were 14?
A: One this I have learned is that you cannot take things back. There are no do-overs. Have I thought about that? For the first couple of years I did a lot and briefly when I declared for London but that soon passed. I have such a rich and fulfilling life that I love exactly where I am and what I am doing right now. Life is Great.
Q: When you win GOLD in London what is the first thing you are going to do?
A: LOL!! DO what I always do to celebrate. Go and get a Grande Strawberries and Cream Frapacinno from Starbucks!! I started drinking that because it matched my Heroes uniform. No kidding!! It is important for a girls drink to match what she wears. (Giggling!)