Growing up, watching the Olympics, and seeing the athletes compete to the best of their ability and push the limits past what anyone thought the human body could is awe-inspiring. Anyone who is a major fan of watching the Olympics, especially gymnastics during the summer games, should be well acquainted with the name Laurie Hernandez. Laurie is an American artistic gymnast, the first Latina gymnast to represent the U.S. since 2004, and went on to win gold in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro as a part of the team dubbed the “Final Five.” Laurie has broken records and has set new standards in the gymnastics world. She is a role model for many individuals around the world, especially this new generation.
Laurie was invited to come to speak at UCF during what the school calls UCFest. UCFest is a spring activity week (think of homecoming, minus the football game and Spirit Splash) where the campus activities board works hard to put on a movie knight, bring in comedians for comedy knight, concert knight, and a guest speaker. (Yes, we spell night as in knight because our mascots are the Knights.) Luckily for the UCF student body, Laurie was able to attend and speak to us on a lot of different topics.
Laurie mainly focused on bringing insight into the mental health struggles she’s faced, stemming from her background in gymnastics as well as the pandemic. The pressure to be perfect in this sport results in lots of stress, anxiety, depression and eating disorders among the athletes that participate. Laurie felt the pressure to be perfect, in every meaning of the word, to perform her routine in front of her coaches, teammates, judges and crowd. Additionally, for a period of time, she wasn’t eating as well as she should’ve. Over the past few years, Laurie found of nutrition/diet plan that works for her, which I was so happy to hear. Her mental health challenges also arose when she moved from New Jersey, her home state, to California to train in a new gym for the Tokyo Summer Games. That was when the pandemic hit. Knowing the games were postponed for the foreseeable future resulted in her being very upset (rightfully so) and the need to transition from her all-time training and dieting high to a more secure daily routine. This is difficult for athletes at this level to come down because leading up to these major games/competitions athletes put their bodies through months of hard training to be in optimal conditions. They must come back down from this high-intensity training carefully so they don’t hurt themselves. Knowing that months of preparations were being put on the back burner was not easy on Laurie’s mental health.
On a more positive note, Laurie was able to fly home to New Jersey to be with her family during the pandemic. Her family of five (mom, dad, older sister and brother) hadn’t been under the same roof in years, so being all together again was very healing. During the height of the pandemic, Laurie started to discover another passion of hers, which was acting and performing. At first, it scared her how she could be passionate about multiple things, not just gymnastics, but she’s now applying to college to pursue this new discovery of hers. She took a couple of theatre and screenwriting classes through UCLA and enjoyed indulging in her creative outlets of writing, playing music and acting during the peak of lockdown. (See Laurie’s acceptance into college here.)
I was lucky enough to be able to ask her a question during the Q&A portion of her sit-down session, and I asked her about what her favorite part of being in the Olympic village was during the games. Besides throwing scrunchies off the balcony with Simone Biles and Aly Raismen, Laurie cherished her time going to the cafeteria and seeing all the athletes from all the different teams — seeing athletes she looked up to growing up, such as Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, as well as international friends from previous international competitions.
I truly believe that Laurie is an inspiration for individuals my age, as well as younger children, to grow up and aspire to be someone like her.