A Sharp County youth has brought home a national title following the 2025 XCEL Gymnastics Invitational May 31 in Sevierville Tenn.
According to Jessica Pitts, mother of 12-year-old Karlee Pitts, this is not the first time her daughter has brought home accolades.
“Last year, she placed 9th overall in the USA in Fort Walton Beach last year after competing in six meets. This was at the 2024 XCEL Championships,” Jessica said. “Last year, she also got 2nd in Arkansas.. Not as good as First but even just to be in the top 10 is special. We were proud last year but this year when she got 1st in the nation for her age division, it was hard to hold back to the tears.”
Karlee said she has been training for six years, and her persistence paid off.
“Some of the competitors were really tough and at times I felt like I couldn’t win, but I kept pursing through. It was lot of tears, hard work, blood and sweat,” Karlee said.
During the years the Coronavirus had brought the world to a near standstill, Karlee said she missed massive amounts of training, adding to her excitement of her recent success.
Training five days a week, between four and five hours a day, Karlee said it was difficult to maintain her skills, but she persisted through hard work and dedication.
“For two years I wasn’t allowed to do gymnastics because of Coronavirus and that set me back a bit. I still did things at home. I did private training with different coaches, exercises at home,” Karlee said.
Karlee trains at TNT Gymnastics in Highland and is soon to be a 7th grade student at Highland Middle School.
When asked what she does with her spare time, Karlee said she enjoyed horseback riding, studying linguistics and swimming.
“For horse riding I go to Casey’s and we do that every Sunday. We ride horses and canter and go around the pen. For swimming I did that when I was younger and can now do that professionally. For three years I did that for three to four hours on the lake,” Karlee said. “Volleyball I just started this year. With the foreign languages, I’m doing Spanish, Koren and Japanese, every Friday.”
Jessica said Karlee is on track to compete when TNT Gymnastics attends the International Gymnastics Competition in the Bahamas later this year.
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