Three gymnasts bound for NCAA Regional Championships Saturday
Three Utah State gymnasts were selected to the NCAA North Central Regional Championships taking place this Saturday, April 10. The competition will be hosted by the University of Utah at the U of U’s Huntsman Center. The gymnasts selected to compete in the competition are senior Heather Heinrich, and juniors Lyndsie Boone and Jackie Dillon. Heinrich and Boone will compete in overall, while Dillon will compete in the uneven bars.
This year will mark Heinrich’s second regional appearance after qualifying in 2008, her sophomore season, in the all-around. This is Boone’s third regional trip after qualifying on beam as a freshman in 2008 and in the all-around last season as a sophomore. Dillon will also be making her second regional trip, after qualifying on vault last year.
Last season, five Aggies qualified for regional competition, which head coach Jeff Richards calls “basically an entire team.” He said if it were not for injuries this year, the Ags would have been able to bring four girls to compete.
Richards said he was extremely proud and honored to have three of his girls make it this year. His hopes for next season, on top of taking the entire gymnastics team to regionals, would be to make the top 36, he said.
“The tradition and history here is great,” Richards said. “Out of the last 33 years that the program has been here, we have had regional qualifiers 26 of those 33 years. It should be something that is expected now.
“Coaching is a tough balance. You want each girl to compete and do well, but you need to take a team to a competition.”
Jackie Dillon
“I really didn’t think I was going to make it this year,” said Dillon, an entrepreneurship major. “But I’m happy I did and will definitely make it next year, and I want to go as a team.”
Dillon suffered an injury early into the season, preventing her from competing on a number of events and forbidding her from doing the floor, her favorite event. She said she was afraid of not having enough meets under her belt this season to even qualify for regionals.
“I like the publicity involved with the sport. It’s fun,” Dillon said. “I’m not always the best student, but gymnastics helps me stay motivated and pushes me.”
Dillon has been involved with gymnastics since she was 2 years old and said the road trips are some of her favorite parts of being on the team. She admits it could be her demise as well.
“It’s hard to stay in touch with non-athletic friends, to balance that (gymnastics and a social life) out,” Dillon said. “It’s hard to be away from my family as well, but you get used to it.”
Even though Dillon no longer lives with any members of the team, she said she still stays just as close to all the girls, and they are her best friends, if not the closest thing she has to family in Utah. She was roommates with Heinrich last year and confessed, “I miss Heather a lot. She was always really lively and funny. The only thing I ever heard her complain about was commercials. She hates commercials.”
Dillon upgraded the difficulty on her bars this year, and, according to coach Richards, that factor put her over the qualifying mark for regionals.
“She didn’t score as high as last year,” Richards said, “because the difficulty was higher. But she just kept practicing and practicing and practicing, and she did it. The difficulty is now enough that she really has a shot at moving onto nationals.”
Dillon, a native of South Carolina, made the move to Logan her freshman year, without a scholarship. She worked hard to gain one for her sophomore year, and she says that year of being tough and doing her best drove her to become the person she is today.
Heather Heinrich
Heinrich said she was born pigeon toed, and her mother put her in numerous sports to try and correct the problem.
“None of them really helped, but once I got put on a gymnastics mat, it stuck,” she said.
Heinrich has doubled as the leader for the Aggies this season and the team star. She earned second-team all-WAC honors on March 27, by finishing fourth in the all-around with a score of 38.950 at the WAC Championships, and holds the top five marks on the team in all-around competition for the season. Perhaps most impressive, in 12 of the 13 meets the Aggies have competed in this year, Heinrich has competed in all-around competition, an attainment that few other gymnasts can boast.
“Heather has worked so hard to get where she is,” Richards said. “She really worked on details this year. She really committed herself. A lot of times as a senior, you just want to be done and get out of here, but not Heather.”
He claims Heather and his personalities clashed at the beginning of the season, but they soon resolved their differences – a stumbling block that, if not overcome, can hinder progress altogether. Heather couldn’t make regionals last year because of an illness, and so, as Richards put it, the competition means “that much more” to her this year, “because she had to miss out on it, she was hungry for it this year.”
“It means a lot more to me to get to go to regionals this year,” Heather confirmed, “and the fact that it’s in Utah, and the fact that I get to go as an all around-er makes it mean that much more to me.”
Competing in all four events – uneven bars, beam, floor and vault – is mentally and physically taxing on athletes, but Heather never complains. Her unyielding perfection carries over into her school work as well, and she boasts numerous academic accolades.
“They call us student athletes, and the ‘student’ comes before the ‘athlete,'” Heinrich joked with her teammates.
Described as an “all-around Aggie,” Heinrich’s leadership for the team has been paramount this season.
Heinrich’s dedication is evident as she speaks about what a commitment gym is.
“You really learn time management being on a team like this. Your life is school, practice, homework and bed. Day after day,” she said. “We don’t really get breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We get a couple of days, but then you’re back in the gym right after. It’s our life. The girls are our sisters. The coach is our dad. You’re not just in a club, you are representing the university.”
Perseverance and teamwork are the other qualities she sees in herself, as well as her teammates, after doing gymnastics.
“I have really struggled mentally this year, especially with the bars,” Heinrich said. “I completely forgot how to do the bars and couldn’t get back into the routine of them. The coach would just force me to do it over and over. I was here (at the practice facility in the HPER) for hours every day. I had rips on my hands, but I’m so grateful coach made me do it. I’m better for it.”
Heather is graduating this spring in information management systems and is planning to live in San Diego. Leaving everybody at USU, she says, will be the hardest part about graduating.
“I am so close to the girls on the team, especially the juniors,” she said. “We had a smaller team this year, so we are all really close to the staff and the girls.”
Heinrich said she plans to visit as much as possible to see her Ags perform.
Lyndsie Boone
Standing at only 5-foot-1, Boone is still quite the presence. She said she’s grateful about her height.
“I don’t know what I would do if I was tall – my feet would hit the bars and I know I would be super clumsy,” she said, then laughed.
Boone, an entrepreneurship major, said she will, “for sure,” make it to regionals, having set that bar for herself after making it in her freshman season.
When asked about her relationships with the girls on the team, her answer came immediately, “We practice a few hours a day, five days a week and a lot of us live with one another. You could say we’re pretty close.”
Boone lives with sophomore teammates Rebecca Holliday and Brandy Dixon.
“We are together all the time,” she said.
Boone, who grew up in Winthrop Harbor, Ill., said she misses her family, but they come to town from Illinois to watch her compete as often as possible.
When asked why her parents put her in gymnastics, she said, “I was always doing flips on the couch and bending in all different sorts of directions. I had a lot of energy, so my parents put me in when I was 3 to calm me down.”
Boone said her favorite event is the floor. And the most difficult?
“The beam is my hardest event, definitely. It has been since I started doing gymnastics,” Boone said. “Coming to USU, I never expected to compete for the beam, but I did.”
Boone said last year’s coaching change was strenuous.
“I came (to USU) because of the coaches, and then they all left the year after I got here, without warning,” she said.
Despite the upset, Boone continued to work hard and adjusted to Richards quickly.
“I had no choice but to stick with it. I stay really focused because of gym. It helps me keep track of everything and keeps me in line,” she said.
This season has proved to be the most stressful in her career, she said, as she spent nearly a whole month unable to compete. Boone injured her knee while competing in the vault at BYU on Feb. 19. It was the first time she has ever had to go without competing.
“I had to skip three or four meets, which was really hard for me,” she said.
Boone made a strong comeback and is a “top contender for nationals”, Richards said.
Boone said she doesn’t plan on continuing with gymnastics after graduation.
“It has been fun for now, but I don’t plan on doing anything with it after.” Boone said. “I am so grateful for gymnastics, though. I love it so much. It has taught me so many things that will be useful to me for the rest of my life.”
– kayla.clark@aggiemail.usu.edu
