McIntire works hard, plays harder
Being a perfectionist and still finding time to have fun sounds like a tough balancing act, but that’s just the sort of thing you’d expect to find in Utah State gymnast Bailey McIntire’s wheelhouse.
The diminutive junior manages to be both a workhorse and a goofball, a curious dynamic readily confirmed by her coach, her co-captain and herself.
“She’s just herself around the team,” said junior Hayley Sanzotti. “Dancing around, doing little things that are just weird, everyone loves her. She’s always been like that.”
McIntire’s carefree demeanor isn’t meant to mask anything, she simply loves gymnastics, hanging out with friends and watching The Bachelor. That doesn’t make her any less of a competitor — when it comes time to perform, few do it better.
“She likes to do a lot,” said USU head gymnastics coach Nadalie Walsh. “She’s got a lead-by-example mentality. She’s a perfectionist, so we try to make sure she doesn’t get down on herself because she does really good gymnastics when she’s happy.”
By all accounts, McIntire seems to be happy an awful lot. Her floor routine as a freshman in 2014 earned her second team All-Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference honors. McIntire followed that up in 2015 with the fifth-best season average on floor in Utah State program history.
“She’s really dependable,” Walsh said. “She’s got that internal drive to be better all the time. She has a brand new floor routine this year and acts like she’s done it a million times. She’s always reeling the crowd in, I love that about her.”
Personality shows through in every aspect of McIntire’s performances. There’s no pre-meet routine to get herself focused, no superstitions, and nothing that can particularly knock her off her game. She lets drama both in and out of the gym roll right over her, and why not?
“I’m the kind of gymnast that doesn’t need to be in my own zone, I can just take whatever’s thrown at me,” McIntire said. “I just do my routine no matter what’s happening around me.”
That attitude lends itself to a certain calm in the locker room. Having been recently elected a team captain alongside Sanzotti, it’s no wonder her teammates respect her ability to diffuse tense situations.
“I’m not dramatic, so I don’t like to take things and make them a bigger deal than they are,” McIntire said. “When people do that I’m good at stepping back and being like this is the problem, let’s fix it.”
In Sanzotti’s eyes, McIntire has opened up more in her junior year than in the past.
“I think she’s just become more open with the whole team,” Sanzotti said. ”She’s fun to be around, especially on meet day. She’s very relaxed, not crazy stressed out or anything.”
“Bailey’s really down to earth,” Walsh agreed. “She see things really clearly when it comes to team chemistry or work ethic.”
Perhaps some of that peacemaking ability stems from being the middle child of three sisters, from a Missouri town where family is never far away.
“I’m from a town where my dad’s parents live there, my mom’s parents live there, all my aunts and uncles live there,” McIntire said. “Missing that and feeling homesick is my biggest struggle outside the gym for sure.”
As with all other facets of her personality, McIntire has the remarkable ability to balance homesickness with the task at hand. Friday saw her notch a 9.825 on floor, her sixth score above 9.8 this season.
Easy going as ever, McIntire sees her accomplishments in her career thus far at USU through the simplest of perspectives.
“I have a lot of inner confidence,” McIntire said with a smile. “It’s kind of a good thing I guess.”
—logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu
Twitter: @logantj