Athlete Profile: Mya Brown

photo by Cheyenne Tolleson

Competing in the Vegas Cup gymnastics competition on January 28, Freshman Mya Brown placed first individually and second overall with her team: Georgia Elite Gymnastics.
by Cheyenne Tolleson and Dairion Peters

​Competing in the Vegas Cup gymnastics competition on January 28, Freshman Mya Brown placed first individually and second overall with her team: Georgia Elite Gymnastics.

Together, they competed in all events ranked at level nine. “We’re one level away from the highest level which is ten,” revealed Brown. 

Within her individual scoring, she took on bar, beam, floor, and vault as her events. In readying herself to do so, she trained for three to four weeks under her coaches, Janessa and Ashley. 

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“The kind of thing we worked on to prepare was a pressure set which is when your whole group, or the whole gym, watches you do your routines,” explained Brown. “We would split up into groups that were picked by the coach, and then, we would all try to hit the routine (do it without falling off). We would do as many rounds as needed until we all hit the routine.”

She then went on to iterate the significance of her team going to the competition. “It was a really big meet because we don’t travel a lot, so to go to Las Vegas and compete was really cool.”

“I was there for a total of four days,” said Brown. “I left on Thursday. . . [and] came back on Monday night to go to school on Tuesday.”

While in Vegas, she and her team were also able to experience some of the activities and attractions offered in the city. “I celebrated [winning] with my gymnastics team by going zip lining over the Ferris wheel and getting ice cream,” she illustrated.

​While Mya has been a gymnast for the last seven years, she is fairly new to her current gym. “[I’m] going on my second year,” she explained. “I really like how the coaches [there] actually help you when you need help on the skill and not just tell you ‘to go for it’. They’re really good at showing you how to do [everything] and the way to do it. It's really fun,” she praised. 

She then went on to open up about what led her to take those first few baby steps into the sport. “I used to climb out of my crib on my own,” shared Brown. “I would go onto the dresser, and [climb] down the knobs of the dresser drawers. My parents were like ‘okay, well if she’s always rolling around‒‒ let’s just try to put her in gymnastics’. Then, after that, I really liked it.”

So much so, she has even gotten herself  the opportunity to progress into the Junior Olympics in her near future. “I’m only one level away,” she said. “I have to try for Elite, and if I get into that, I can do the Junior Olympics.”