I Was Broken
There was a time where I was on top of the world, an Olympic hopeful. I was unbeatable. Until I wasn't.
Gymnastics
Katelyn Ohashi was a 10-time All-America gymnast at UCLA and was the 2018 national co-champion in the floor exercise — the same year the Bruins won the NCAA team title. In her collegiate career, she won three individual Pac-12 championships and earned 11 perfect 10 scores (nine times in the floor exercise, twice on the balance beam). Ohashi was renowned for her ability to incorporate modern and popular dance elements into her floor routines, and in January 2019, video of her floor exercise at the Collegiate Challenge — for which she scored one of her perfect 10s — went viral on social media. Born in Seattle in 1997, Ohashi took to gymnastics at an early age. When she was nine, she moved to Kansas City, Mo., with her mother and the youngest of her three older brothers to further her training. Three years later, she moved to Plano, Texas, where she attended Spring Creek Academy, a special high school for students who need flexible academic schedules — at the time, Katelyn was practicing gymnastics six days a week for up to seven hours a day. She competed in the 2009 Junior Olympic National Championships. Ohashi was a four-time member of the U.S. junior national team and was USA Gymnastics’ 2011 junior national all-around champion. Competing as a senior at the 2013 American Cup, she finished first in the all-around competition, defeating runner-up Simone Biles to clinch the title. Ohashi retired from competitive gymnastics in 2019.