“The Future Is Bright For Hopewell Athletics”- Marina Pinchotti/Hopewell Gymnastics

Plenty of student athletes in the Hopewell School District are doing great things and Hopewell Sports Nation will continue to let you know about them.

Did you know that this past weekend, we had a freshman win a WPIAL Championship?

At the WPIAL Gymnastics Championship at Moon High School, Hopewell 9th grader Marina Pinchotti walked away as the WPIAL All-Around Champion in the Intermediate II Division with a score of 33.725. She also placed 2nd on the Beams.

Let me repeat, she’s only a freshman!

Because of this, we wanted to highlight Marina and make her the next athlete in our series, “The Future Is Bright For Hopewell Athletics.”

Marina started taking gymnastics classes (tumble tots) when she turned 3 years old and has never looked back. Pinchotti tells HSN that Monaca Turners is the one and only place that she’s ever trained.

In terms of competitive gymnastics, that started for Marina at the end of 3rd grade when she did enough to earn her way onto the team and the rest is history and now Championships!

Some other individual honors that she’s accomplished through the years include:
*Qualified for states in the Gold Division in the USAC X-Cel program (unfortunately it was cancelled due to COVID).
*In 2022 with USAG-X-Cel, she took home 4th place All Around in the Gold Division at the PA X-Cel States Competition in Pittsburgh.

Hopewell Sports Nation caught up with Pinchotti and got her thoughts on what’s she’s accomplished in her first year with the Hopewell High School Gymnastics team.

“It is a lot different this year doing High School gymnastics because you are now competing against all of your friends that you have been competing with for all these years,” said Pinchotti. “But it is an amazing feeling when you can still hear your friends cheering you on from across the gym even when they are on another team.”

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“This year was also hard with Stella and Reece out injured but it meant a lot to me that they still came to the meets to support us and cheer us on.”

We wanted to know if Marina surprised herself at all with her success at such a young age?

“I wouldn’t say that I surprised myself because everyone works so hard and during a meet, it can just take a bobble on floor or slipping off the team that makes a difference of how you place. During the season, we all have good meets and also have frustrating meets.”

“All of my coaches help me, but Terri, Jess and Cherie have been there from the beginning and have watched me grow up. I almost didn’t do gymnastics this year due to the time commitment but when you have supportive coaches that say, “we will work it out”, I felt I owed it to myself and to them to give it a shot. Of course, I also want to thank my parents for providing me this opportunity. It’s a commitment for them too and I couldn’t do it without them.”

However, to become good at anything you do, you must put the work in and Pinchotti definitely does that. It’s not been easy as she’s learning the skill of time management and trying to fit her gymnastics training in along with the other sports she plays (softball and volleyball). Not to mention, finding time to take care of her academics. Marina is obviously doing that as she just finished this past 9 weeks achieving high honors for school.

“Hard work and commitment are the keys to any athlete’s success,” said Pinchotti. “Gymnastics is all year long. We don’t get any time off because of that, I have to work in practices around other sports practices and schoolwork. There are days where I go from one sports practice to another, then still have to come home to do homework or study for a test.”