Mya Lauzon stands facing away from the head judge, going through keywords and visualizing the routine ahead. She turns and salutes the judge before mounting the beam–dialing in on the internal thoughts and pushing out the noise, as everything can be a distraction. Before each skill, she goes through her designated keywords and continues to remind herself that these are skills that have been practiced all year and she knows how to do them and do them well. Once she lands, she can listen to the cheers.
Going into this season, California had only hit the 49.500 mark on beam twice, with the highest beam score being 49.525. As this season came to a close, the Golden Bears struck gold on the event, recording the top two scores in program history just two days apart. Similarly, a gymnast from California had never scored a 10.000 until that same weekend when Lauzon broke that barrier.
The routine that scored the perfect mark was not one that Lauzon thought would score a 10.000–she knows that she could have stuck that dismount better. Even so, Lauzon recalls that moment saying “then the score went up and I don’t know, I’ve never really felt that’s something that exciting.”
That was not the only record broken that day. California also broke the team…
