As the noise of the gym quiets around her, sophomore Jessie Cao replays a sequence of movements in her head — cartwheel roundoff, full turn, split jump. She opens her eyes to face the panel of judges that sit before her. Coating her hands with chalk, she takes a deep breath to calm her nerves and grips the padded wooden beam to swing up. As a hush falls over the crowd, Jessie begins her routine. 

Jessie stepped into the world of gymnastics when she was six after her parents registered her for introductory classes. While she was too nervous to attend her first class due to the unfamiliar environment and left before it began, she returned the next day more optimistically and has continued since.

“In other sports, you’re always practicing the same thing,” Jessie said. “For example, in soccer, you’re just passing a ball around, bouncing and shooting it into a goal. You’re limited in what you can do, but then gymnastics is so much more flexible. You can learn new skills, which is rewarding because when you learn a hard skill, you feel really good about yourself.”

She began training in the Junior Olympic program in 2021, the track for athletes to advance towards collegiate and Olympic gymnastics, at the California Sports Center. After dedicating nearly 14 hours a week during all three years of middle school, she realized that the heavy schedule made it exhausting to balance with the workload of her school classes. She transitioned into the alternative Xcel program the summer before entering high school, allowing for a more flexible and personalized training schedule and competition path.

Participating in around six meets a season, she ended the 2025 season winning first place all-around — a format calculated using the total score from all four event apparatuses — in her age group at the 2025 Regional competition and third place at the State competition. With experience competing in high-stakes events, Jessie has built habits to manage the pressure of competitions.

“Before each of my events, I usually imagine myself doing the routine in my head and how I would imagine a perfect routine,” Jessie said. “During the routine for certain skills, I tell myself certain keywords before or while I’m doing the move to make sure that I perform it the way I want to. Right before I compete, I tell myself positive self-talk, like ‘Oh, you got this,’ or ‘Trust yourself.’”

Airborne Gymnastics teammate and close friend Quynh-Mai Duarte praises Jessie’s caring and attentive personality. She especially appreciates how Jessie fosters a welcoming environment for the entire team by cheering on other gymnasts across the gym. 

“Jessie’s really good about asking for corrections, and she’s always wanting to be better and trying to improve,” Quynh-Mai said. “She’s always actively seeking help, so that’s how she gets over obstacles. It makes me also want to become a better athlete and gymnast overall.”

Jessie currently practices nine hours a week at Airborne Gymnastics, perfecting skills in her events. According to her vault and bars Coach Taylor Diaz, who has instructed  Jessie for around a year, a significant turning point for Jessie was understanding the importance of her mindset and pushing through struggles like missteps or falters.

“Her mindset has changed drastically for the sport,” Diaz said. “She doesn’t break down anymore. We don’t see the tears. She gets frustrated, but she manages it quite a bit better than she used to. Mentally and emotionally, I think that has been her biggest change, just really being able to toughen up and be like, ‘I had a rough day or that skill didn’t work this great today, but there’s the next event and the next day.’”

In the future, Jessie hopes to continue chasing new milestones like mastering the Yurchenko vault, a roundoff followed by a back handspring, and performing a double back, a dismount with two backward flips off the bars. The two skills, which she has been working on for over a year, are strong foundations for more complex skills later on.

“That feeling when you get a new skill, when you feel yourself improving on something you struggle with or when you overcome a mental block [is] really rewarding,” Jessie said. “As long as you push yourself and think you’re trying your hardest, that’s what matters the most.”