Women in Sport Week feature story – Molley Nightingale

This Monday marks the start of Women in Sport's week where we will be celebrating all the women involved in gymnastics one day at a time!

For today’s focus on visibility, we want to feature Molley Nightingale, international gymnast and Ireland’s former tumbling national champion. Her story highlights the challenge of "Keeping on top of it all" that some gymnasts face with school/college.

“How my journey began: I started gymnastics when I was 10 years old in Ennis Gymnastics club, where I was coached by my current personal coach Elaine. Here I found the love for gymnastics, when Elaine opened a club in Shannon focusing on Tumbling is where my obsession with the sport developed. Here I tumbled until I was 16 years old, competing nationally and at minor international competitions.

Elaine had decided to pursue her own passions for travelling which meant the club would close, and as I was still loving the sport unconditionally and wasn’t ready to give up on my dreams yet. My only option, at this time, to continue to train tumbling in Ireland was in Cavan, over 165km away. This was going to be a huge commitment not only for me but for my mum too.

My mum was a single parent and had to take on extra work to keep this dream alive for me. Her sacrifices were immeasurable, and she turned my dream into her dream and supported me unconditionally, which was to compete at World Age Championships.

The odds were now against me as I lived in Galway and went to school there, my life was there, friends and family but I wanted to continue my journey in gymnastics. This meant I had to travel to Cavan, a 5 hour round trip, at the weekends during the school year, even some Wednesdays in the lead up weeks to competition and increase training to Monday – Friday during the summer. But it was worth it and after months of dedication from me and my mum my dreams became a reality when I qualified for World Age Championships. Something we are both proud of.

Sport kept me focused and always gave me a reason to say “No”, when facing the peer pressure of drinking and smoking growing up, having something to be focused on meant I wasn’t interested in any of that behaviour. But I did find trying to balance my time with friends and my commitment to my sport challenging at times, but I made it work.

I continued to train in Cavan until my leaving cert which meant I had to balance my time between studying and training. I had to identify how I was going to achieve both. and I tried to be as disciplined as possible. Something that was difficult to do at times. I decided I wanted to pursue a career in PE teaching, and discovered I could apply through a different route. While this route would take longer and I’d have to be in the top percentile of my class, this option meant I could continue to train.

When I began my college journey in Tralee, I did take a step back from training but after a year I was ready to fully jump back in again, I felt I hadn’t fully completed what I wanted to achieve in this sport.

Elaine was back coaching, and I began training with her again but this time round it was hard. The physical demand was difficult, as a 20-year-old woman who had reduced training and indulged in adult life for about a year, I lost a lot of strength. There were so many days, especially at the start that I wanted to give up and walk away forever but I just was too obsessed with the sport to do this. I travelled from Tralee to Ennis, every Wednesday to training and went home every weekend to train in Galway.

For a couple years after returning to this sport I just coasted along and struggled to get back to a “peak level”. As an Adult wanting to return to this level, took so much more than just the training, which I didn’t realise for so long. I was nursing ongoing Achilles pains for the last number of years and felt this added to the challenges I already faced. For years I was told “you have reached your peak”, and “you might not get past this stage” and I won’t lie, when hearing this I did feel it knocked me back, but I knew deep down I had more to give. I had self-belief I know my body could do more.

A physio linked me up with a strength and conditioning coach to reduce the risk of my Achilles tendon tearing. Tom French in Sports Academy, began training me and creating a training program to suit my needs and my body. As I was now an adult, my body was so different from when I was a teenager. This is when I started to notice a difference not only in my training but also my confidence, because of the constant knock backs I was now experiencing, I lacked confidence, I knew I had more to give but struggled to believe I could actually complete the skills.

Tom always had such a positive mindset and always helped with boosting my confidence as well as developing my plans for strength and conditioning. After realising that training at this age was more than just training, I had to adjust my strength plans, recovery plans and nutrition. After about 6 months, is when all of this started to come together, after about 9 months, I began to make huge progress and surpass the level that people had said potentially could have been my best.

I competed at multiple Scalabis Cups, (2018, 2019, 2022) which were minor internationals, taking 3^rd twice. Becoming national champion for multiple consecutive years in a row. We also got to travel to multiple clubs in England to train, which was a blessing as I got to work with more women my age, which wasn’t an option here in Ireland because most women dropped out at a young age. This is something I would love to see change!

I have made female friends all over the world through being involved in gymnastics for such a long time. I qualified for my first Senior Major European Championships in 2022. Training continued to progress with many highs and lows along the way, which is a normal aspect to anyone involved in sport. I work as a full time PE teacher, so it was hard to juggle training, nutrition, strength and conditioning and all that comes with it as busy female adult. I am the oldest competitor in gymnastics at an international level in Ireland and that is also something I am very proud of.

Competing at a high level as a female isn’t always easy but I refused to leave my goals behind me because of my age. Coming towards the end of my career I wanted to qualify for one more big event, but also, I wanted to compete a ‘double straight transition’ which is a huge skill and goal of mine for years.

In 2024 I qualified for a world cup and couldn’t be prouder of myself with what I had achieved along the way. Overcoming lots of hurdles that come with competing into your late 20s, recovery was not the same anymore and training load had to be monitored. ‘Double straight Transition’ the skill I had been longing to compete, which I had been working on for years and had many step backs throughout the years, was finally coming together and I was the most confident I had ever been and was ready to go. But unfortunately, less than a week before leaving for the World cup in Portugal I ruptured my Achilles tendon. This was one of the most heart-breaking moments of my career, but everything happens for a reason, and my journey in gymnastics doesn’t have to end here!

As I prepare for the next chapter in my life, motherhood, I hope to return to tumbling at some point in the near future for fun and fitness, tumbling will always be a huge part of my life. Over the last few years, I began coaching and hope to become more involved over the coming years, to give back to the sport that gave me so much. I hope one day I will be still bouncing around in the gym with my own children, not only to stay fit in a way that I love, but I want to see my children get the same joy that I got from gymnastics. I hope to see in the future more funding towards high level tumbling to support women to achieve a higher level on the international stage, as my mother funded my career as a junior and I continued to fund my career at senior level, which wasn’t always easy, having to take on extra jobs which had an impact on my training schedule.”

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