It took Leah Norton the better part of six years to realize that gymnastics could be a part of her life without being her life.

Six years of 24-hour practice weeks, five national titles, a disastrous move to Texas that cost her the opportunity to have a normal senior year in high school, and an injury that literally broke every bone in her hand. Six years that has brought her to where she is today.

Six years of dreams — a college scholarship, Olympic aspirations — traded for new ones — a career in broadcast journalism with maybe some gymnastics on the side.

For Norton, Salina freshman, the journey has taken her from gym queen to college student, and though the transition has been tough at times, Norton said it was one she needed to make because the sport had stopped being fun.

But she’s not far from her past. Sure, she doesn’t crank out thousands of pushups and sit-ups every week like she used to, but she teaches gymnastics for 12 to 15 hours a week, and she’s the vice president of the Kansas club team where she still competes occasionally. The gym is still a part of her life and always will be, it just doesn’t consume her anymore, and she thinks that is a good thing.

Norton and those around her knew she was good from the very beginning. At 5, in her preschool program, she was doing things 5 year olds shouldn’t be doing — round offs, back handsprings and the like — but lessons were an expensive proposition, so she took a seven-year hiatus spent tramp-jumping and doing cartwheels in her front yard.

Finally, at 12, her parents heard her pleas and enrolled her in lessons at Salina’s recreation department. She remembers vividly the first time walking up to the three-story brick Memorial Hall where her lessons were held and bonding almost instantly with her new coach and teammates.

“I was the oldest and the wildest,” she said. “I was fearless.”

Thus began her involvement in the sport that would dominate her adolescence, and though her school grades

suffered, as did her social life outside

of the gym, Norton was where she wanted to be — excelling at the sport that had become her passion. She made three trips to nationals and recorded first-place finishes in five total events. By the end of her junior year in high school, a gymnastics scholarship was clearly in her sights.

Then her coach moved to Texas, and Norton’s downward spiral began. Instead of staying with her family and friends in Kansas and living out a normal end to her high school career, Norton followed her coach to the one stop sign town of Krum, Texas.

First came the broken hand. It was the second day of a gymnastics camp, and Norton landed a jump awkwardly off the vault and paid the price. The break was set wrong, so the projected six weeks of recovery time became two months. Then there was the hardship of learning that she couldn’t live with her old coach and she had to experience living with an unfamiliar coach, who enforced strict 9 p.m. bedtimes and rigorous training schedules. And there was a week-long trip to visit her college-student boyfriend in North Dakota, a week that exposed her to what her college life could be like if it wasn’t dominated by gymnastics. When her coach suggested she train through the holidays instead of going home to visit her family, a tearful Norton decided she’d had enough, and that was the end of her gymnast dreams.

Now, just more than a year later, she’s here at Kansas, attending school in the one state that doesn’t have a single NCAA gymnastics program.

Norton contents herself with helping and encouraging her peers, recruiting new members to the club and teaching her students. It’s a long way from where she saw herself heading a couple years ago, but sometimes the path our hearts mandate is different from the one we expect.