There’s a word that’s associated with gymnastics that most people don’t think about when they hear it. It’s routine. It’s something that typically describes an exercise being performed, either in competition or in practice. To most of us, the word has a more mundane meaning, about a set of tasks that happen every day. For one woman, these two meanings took on a convergence.
That convergence signified a time for a change.
I recently ran into this woman here in Wayne who traded her time in a gym for a life dedicated to…motorcycles.
When it comes to change, it’s hard to find a more unlikely transition than going from gymnastics to life revolving around motorcycles, but for Brooke Mullen, it made all the sense in the world. Here’s her story of how she moved on from her Olympic dreams to become known as “parts girl”, and why sometimes changing your life’s direction can be the most freeing thing you can do.
My name is Brooke, and you can find me behind the parts counter at Town and Country Cycle Center. I’m a 33-year-old Clifton native who used to eat, sleep, and breathe the sport of Gymnastics. At eighteen months old my parents enrolled me in my first gymnastics class, leading to my competitive career at a very young age. In my prime, it felt like I spent more hours inside a gym than at my own home. My childhood dream was to make the Olympic team or to own my own gymnastics facility.
At fourteen I became a gymnastics instructor's aide. I immediately fell in love with teaching and eventually had classes of my own. For the next eighteen years, I dedicated my life to teaching my passion.
Gymnastics is a beautiful sport that trains your mind, body, and character in so many ways. To be successful, you need to be ready for the high demand of commitment, dedication, and trust in the process. It’s a huge investment of time. After years of both training and coaching, I finally realized something though…
Time had become very valuable to me.
I would never trade the years I’ve spent in a gym, but as I’ve grown, so have my values and needs in life. As I get older, time seems to pass by in a flash. This realization made it clear to me that my work-life balance was not where I wanted it to be.
I took a big swing at something new. I trained for MMA and cage fighting, auditioning for American Ninja Warrior along with 78,000 other would-be contestants, and was one of the 300 women chosen to compete. Unfortunately, a week before the competition began, I tore my ACL. But that wasn’t going to stop me. Despite my injury, I finished in the Top 10 for the Women’s group.
But my journey of change didn’t stop there.
It was during COVID that my world felt like it was unraveling, along with everyone else’s. This was it, my opportunity to start over. People’s lives changed overnight and I jumped on the opportunity to change mine, but in a very different way. At 30 years old I decided to get my motorcycle license!
This wasn’t a midlife crisis thing. Thanks to the world hitting the pause button, I decided it would be the best time to teach myself a new skill. Other than having a motorcycle license in my opinion is super rad, I had a more sentimental reason. My father, uncle, and brothers ride, so getting my license and being able to ride together meant more family bonding time, and what we riders like to call “throttle therapy.”
When the world opened back up, I decided to say farewell to my gymnastics past, and hello to my motorcycle future. Growing up with a father who was an auto mechanic who owned his own business and an uncle who owned a salvage yard, all I wanted to do was get my hands dirty and learn how to fix things! So that next chapter in my life turned into a job application at Town and Country Cycle Center.
When I spoke to Cynthia Koeller there, she must’ve seen something special in me or I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’d happily landed in my new world. Co-owners Eric and Kerry took me under their wing and have been teaching and guiding me since day one. I’m your local parts associate, or as I like to be called, “the parts girl.” My goal stepping into this role is to learn the bikes inside out, but my adult dream has become to one day be a motorcycle mechanic.
Riding motorcycles not only brought me closer to my family, but it’s how I met my boyfriend, Mike. Mike has a pro motocross license, which means he rides an off-road motorcycle at a very advanced level. Meeting Mike opened yet another door in my motorcycle world, as he’s heavily involved with both motocross racing and sanctioned woods events called hare scrambles.
I’ve since begun my own motocross adventure, participating in a full schedule of hare scrambles in 2023. As a rookie, it was both intimidating and thrilling to be part of the competition among others who had far more experience than I. But my competitive nature has kicked in, with all the dirt and speed and intensity I’ve been looking for. It’s definitely the adrenaline replacement I used to get flying through the air in gymnastics.
Moving forward, aside from loving my job, and enjoying the relationships that have been created from this lifestyle change, I’m on my way in motocross, earning my stripes and I’ll come back faster next year. So hopefully the next time you hear my name it’ll either be because you’re shopping at Town and Country Cycle Center with your favorite parts girl, or maybe because you catch me at your local hare scramble!
My competitive nature has kicked in, with all the dirt and speed and intensity I’ve been looking for.