Former gymnastics star now a lawyer concentrating on raising family in Seattle area

Blood really is thicker than … chalk? It certainly is for Shelly Bartlett Lambert.

Recently, the Spokane native was greeted with the smell of chalk as she walked into a gym near her West Seattle home, bringing back a flood of memories.

There were her formative years with Northwest Gymnastics Academy and University Titans. Then there was an All-America career at Nebraska. Next she spent three years at North Carolina State as a graduate assistant while she earned her masters.

But when her sister became pregnant with her first child – or, for this story, Lambert’s first niece or nephew – it was time to come home.

“I had been away about seven years,” she said. “I loved North Carolina; it’s so beautiful, but I knew that wasn’t where I wanted to live. I missed Washington so much, the people, everything about the mountains, being near the water. I wanted to get back close to family.”

The last eight years have been a whirlwind.

She taught history at Shorecrest High School north of Seattle for four years. Despite a passion for teaching, she decided to go to law school while she was still young.

In rapid succession she fell in love, started law school, started a family, finished school and opened her own practice.

“I applied to law school and right then I met my future husband,” she said of Leo Lambert, an airline pilot. “We met and were engaged within three or four months and married four months later. I pretty much could have married him two weeks after I met him. That was pretty amazing. He’s my soul mate.”

She finished law school while pregnant with Leo, who is 2½-years old, but the demands of a big law firm didn’t interest the new mother.

She took the bar exam while pregnant with Wyatt, who is almost 15 months, and opened her own office in January, working part time.

“We’re in a fortunate position I don’t have to make enough money to pay the mortgage,” she said. “So far it’s been great. I’m able to really give my clients one-on-one time. I’ve had to refer some people to other attorneys. I’m an advocate of everyone should have legal counsel and should be able to afford it. That’s one thing that’s really important to me.”

The Lamberts “work hard and play hard,” which hasn’t left time for gymnastics.

She has begun to connect with former teammates at Nebraska and is looking forward to a reunion in Lincoln that coincides with the Cornhuskers holding the NCAA Championships in April.

Her husband will find that his wife is kind of a legend.

She missed one meet in four years, never a practice, and competed in all four events in every one of those meets. She set school records in the all-around and two individual events while helping the Huskers make the NCAA Championships three times. For good measure, she was a four-time scholastic All-American, completing her career in 1997.

“I think about Nebraska an awful lot, but since I moved I haven’t talked about it a lot,” she said. “That was my whole life. … There isn’t one thing I would change about my experience at Nebraska.”

Picking one lesson from that time that has stayed with her was easy.

“Working together as a team,” Lambert said. “How I relate that to my life now is we focus on how (our family) is going to be a great team. You just have different layers of that (with our extended families).”

Yes, she said, team is the focal point for the individual sport.

“Gymnastics is an individual sport before you get in college but in college you’re only as good as the six women you put in an event,” she said. “You can go on as an individual but it’s not the same as going on as a team. I almost forget that gymnastics is an individual sport.”

Her priority now is raising a family, but eventually she could return to teaching, and don’t count out some connection with gymnastics.

“I loved gymnastics so much, if there would have been a professional league I would have tried out in a heartbeat,” she said. “Had I been able to coach and come back to Washington I would have but that wasn’t in the cards. So when I came back I dove into teaching and trying to become the best teacher I possibly could.

“I miss teaching,” she added. “I wouldn’t mind teaching law after I have more experience.”