Joyce Chen (11) stood in front of the beam and took a shaky breath. Ignoring the trembling in her hands, Chen closed her eyes and inhaled deeply one last time before starting her routine at the CIF championship meet, May 22. She mounted the beam, then started the trickiest skill of her routine: a switch leap connected with a stag ring jump. As she launched herself into the jump, Chen threw her head back with confidence before she landed perfectly on the beam. She dismounted with a back handspring back tuck, concluding the beam routine that broke the varsity optional school record and helped earn the team the CIF Champion title with a score of 9.700.
Two athletes from the gymnastics team, Chen and Bella Paguyo (10), set new school records for beam in varsity optional and varsity compulsory, respectively. Varsity optional, the highest division of gymnastics, had a previous beam record of 9.625, which was set by Chen herself, May 15. Meanwhile, Paguyo scored a 9.900 in the varsity compulsory division in the meet against Torrey Pines, April 24, breaking the previous record of 9.850.
Each gymnast competing on the beam for the varsity optional division is given a starting score based on the bonuses the athlete aims to receive. Bonuses are given through smooth connections between skills and executing difficult skills without mistakes. Chen’s starting score was a 9.800.
“My routine was pretty good,” Chen said. “I think I could’ve been more confident in my skills, and I had a few imperfections. But overall, it was one of the more solid routines from this season. It has a few upgrades compared to last year with harder skills, so my starting score was higher.”
She said that the most difficult part of her routine was the connection in her dance series, which is a switch leap to a stag ring jump. Since it was also the first skill after mounting, it required a lot of confidence.
“The stag ring jump is particularly difficult because I have to throw my head back, which means I’m not able to spot the beam on the landing,” Chen said. “I had to remind myself to trust my training because it can be scary doing that skill. If I second guess myself, it’s really easy to lean towards one side and fall off the beam or not reach the full required position of each element.”
Chen said she was proud to have stuck the routine with no mistakes at the meet. However, her warm up was not stable. She said she had multiple falls and wobbles, which made her nervous for the routine.
“I tried to take deep breaths and talk myself through the whole routine, saying my positive affirmations and reassuring myself in order to stay calm,” Chen said. “It’s easy to get too excited after sticking a skill in the routine and lose focus later on, so I am careful with my thoughts. I try to stay focused on the skill I am doing in order to ensure that all my skills throughout the entire routine are solid.”
After her performance, Chen said she didn’t find out about the score until her teammate broke the news to her.
“I usually don’t see my scores until the awards ceremony at the end of the meet, but at this particular meet, my friend came up to me and told me I broke the school record,” she said. “I was really excited and proud of myself because I feel like this result reflects all the hard work I’ve put in this season. I’m really glad that I was able to cement my record into school history. I think it shows that anything is possible.”
Paguyo’s record in varsity compulsory was for the same event as Chen’s: beam. One key difference between the two divisions is that the starting score for compulsory is fixed at 10, and is not affected by skills that provide bonuses.
Paguyo said she found one specific skill in her routine difficult.
“The back walkover was hard, and that’s the only skill that I actually find scary,” Paguyo said. “I have mental blocks on any skill that goes backwards. But I really like the dance skills because I like to express myself through dance.”
To address this challenge in her routine, Paguyo created a practice method.
“I like to make sure I land at least three back walkovers before the meet,” she said. “During practice, it’s important to [address] some of the mental weight. After I’ve practiced them repeatedly, I become more comfortable with all the skills.”
During the meet against Torrey Pines, Paguyo said she was able to calm herself in preparation for her routine.
“I wasn’t too scared because I’ve competed there before, so I was more comfortable with the equipment,” Paguyo said. “Beam is usually the scariest [event], so my heart rate was a little bit up. But I knew that I could do the skills, so I didn’t let it take over my emotions. I breathed and again, I visualized and said [affirmations] in my head to mentally prepare myself. I knew inside I could do all the skills. But I [wobbled] in my cartwheel, so I didn’t think my score would be that high.”
Despite this mistake, Paguyo performed a nearly perfect routine, scoring 9.900.
“I turned around, and I went ‘Oh my god,’” Paguyo said. “Everybody was telling me that it’s such a good score, and they were cheering for me. I felt very accomplished. It felt like every other routine that I’ve done, so I was just really taken aback by my score. Now that I know what I did with the skills and how I performed, I plan to carry it on for my next competitions.”
Along with the new individual records, the gymnastics team also broke the official CIF team record with a team score of 227.95 at the CIF finals and kept an undefeated record during the season. Paguyo attributed their success to the team’s emphasis on focus during the routines.
“Everybody has been very focused on execution,” Paguyo said. “The higher level skills will get you higher start values, but execution is what it comes down to the most. So when people are focused, we can get high scores like this.”
Chen said that she was very proud of the team’s outstanding performance this year.
“Winning CIF was great and it was fun,” she said. “But for all the gymnasts on our team, breaking a record means so much more to us. CIF is more about the competition rather than it is about how you really perform. If the team we were going against was really bad, we could also do really horribly and still win. And that doesn’t mean anything. But when it comes to breaking records, the judges’ scoring is pretty much objective. It means that it was truly all your accomplishment, all your hard work. As a gymnast, getting a high score is so amazing because it essentially means you are the closest you can be to perfection.”
