DUNLAP -- The Summer Olympics are later this month in London. For those lucky enough to participate, getting there has required an incredible focus.
A little girl in our area has used that same dream, and that same focus, to overcome an awful lot.
"On the end of the beam, I imagine a dot," says 11-year-old Brooklyn Thrasher. "And I keep my eyes on it."
Brooklyn has an ability to focus that is well beyond her age.
"She looks tiny," says her coach, Shela Abbott, "but she's very strong."
Because as Brooklyn knows, it's what you focus on that makes all the difference.
"When she does competitions," one observer says, "you'd never believe what she's been through."
At the gym in Dunlap where she trains, Brooklyn is the biggest success story, even though she's been in it less than two years.
"Most kids don't progress as quickly as she did," Abbott says. "She learned so quickly and advanced very quickly. She was even the state champion on a couple events."
Needless to say, Brooklyn is pretty good.
How she ended up in this gym isn't.
"When she first joined the team," Abbott says, "she was pretty quiet."
At the age of six, Brooklyn and her brother Jason were taken from their mother, and put into foster care. And the home she was put into did not work out.
"When we learned about the situation with her and her brother," Bill Thrasher says now, "it was just an instant -- 'What do we gotta do?'"
Bill and his wife Christy, along with their sons Dakota and Colin, took Brooklyn and her brother Jason into their Elkhart home, and adopted them a short time later.
The decision was easy. The adjustment wasn't.
"She was very quiet," Christy says. "She would have anxiety attacks. She didn't talk to my husband for the first six months that she was with us."
"There's all this stuff going through your mind that just makes you..." Brooklyn says before trailing off.
Christy and Bill wanted Brooklyn to focus on something else. They suggested gymnastics. And had no idea what was about to happen.
"She has come so far," Christy says. "From being the meek little girl, that, she would hang on me if somebody new walked into the room. And now..."
Now, Brooklyn is not only accomplished in the gym -- and is she ever -- but flourishing out of it.
"It took gymnastics, I think, to bring her out of her shell," Christy says. "If we didn't put her in gymnastics, I believe she would have never come out like she did. If she did, it would have taken a lot longer.
"I know the point that she wants to get across is, no matter what happens, you can still move on from it and reach your dreams. And that's what she does."
"If anything happens in life, don't let it stop you, just keep going to your goal," Brooklyn says. "I knew if I gave up I wouldn't be able to reach my goal.
"I want to go to the Olympics and win the gold medal."
