Romina Gupta has been competing in acrobatic gymnastics for just six months, but she can already call herself a national champion.
Gupta, along with her teammates, took home the gold medal from the USA Gymnastics Acrobatic National Championships in Louisville, Ky., on July 30.
“It was a whole different experience. I was really glad that I got to go to nationals,” Gupta said.
Gupta and her team – Anika Rix and Caitlynn Guzman – earned first place honors with a score of 26.200 out of a possible 30 points.
“We were really proud. Our goal was to hit a 26,” Gupta said.
The team beat out two others for the gold medal with just one shot to make an impression on the judges.
Gupta said they were a bit nervous because they had to go first.
“I told one of my teammates ‘we have to scare them (the competition) because now we can’t do bettter than them,” Gupta said.
Gymnastics isn’t new to Gupta, who had been involved in artistic gymnastics (the style most associated with the Olympics) since she was still a toddler.
She competed in artistic gymnastics until health issues forced her to step aside. However, Gupta said she still wanted to compete in sports and set out to find something else she enjoyed.
“I really wanted to find some other competitive sport that I could do because I love sports and staying active. It’s really important for me,” Gupta said.
She already is involved at Oakwood High School, has interned for 17th Congressional District Candidate Ro Khanna, hangs out with friends and plays with her dog, Chloe.
But after diving and track didn’t tickle her fancy – though she admits she was good at track – Gupta said she opted to try acrobatic gymnastics after hearing about a gym in San Jose.
Acrobatic gymnastics is a relatively new form of gymnastics, starting in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It made its way to the United States in the late 1970s and is growing in popularity.
Unlike its artistic cousin, acrobatic is meant to be done with at least one partner where the athletes perform routines as a team. They perform various flips, dances and balancing exercises without the use of equipment.
Teams can be either pairs – men, women and coed – or groups. Men perform in fours while women have teams of three.
Initially, Gupta said, she just got involved in the tumbling class to keep up her skills with gymnastics until she started to get noticed by coaches.
Gupta decided to give competing a try in February, but by then, the teams were a month away from their first competition.
Gupta still worked out with some of the girls and found she had a knack for some of the maneuvers.
“I tried out there and I got the skills really fast with one group of girls,” Gupta said.
By chance, a girl dropped out of competing and Gupta found a spot on the team.
Gupta’s role is the base.
Within a three-girl team, there is a designated base, who provides a platform for the maneuvers to be performed. Then there is the middle who balances on the base and holds up the top who performs various balancing and stretching maneuvers.
The middle girl will also perform some flexible maneuvers herself, which can range from balancing the top while doing the splits to being held up by the base and bending backwards forming a letter P.
That is the balance portion of scoring. The girls also do a dynamic performance, which involves a dancing routine that incorporates tumbling exercises and girls flipping on and over each other.
Gupta said because she started so late, her and the other girls were still trying to get to know each other by the time the first competition rolled around.
Compounding matters was the fact that Gupta was so used to the individualistic nature of gymnastics and had to get used to working with members of a team.
This included learning how to communicate among each other and constructively offer pointers.
“Gymnastics is such an independent sport,” Gupta said. “It’s all about yourself and it’s not about communicating with others or anything like that. It’s just you and your coach.”
But they started to get better. Gupta also found that she needed to get stronger, especially in her arms to carry the load of two gymnasts on top of her.
“It was pretty hard at first and I used to come home and think this is not working out, but I guess practice and time and lots of conditioning and strength work, that kind of paid off,” Gupta said.
This required her to do a lot of cardio work, handstand holds, running and other conditioning.
Eventually they won their regional competition and advanced to Kentucky.
With the national championships over, the new season of acrobatic gymnastics will now start.
Gupta will likely not be with her team this next season, as she wants to try to qualify for international competition.
Each gymnast has a choice about which level they want to compete at – whether it be nationally or internationally – and if the other girls opt to not move up, the team will be broken up.
