Sarah Yandow gave up ballet at the ripe old age of five in favor of a career in gymnastics. The reason? Because it was too boring.
Well, life has been far from boring ever since Yandow, who will make her debut for BYU tonight, made possibly the most important decision of her life. She's had several injuries and has learned to work around those injuries by adding different skills to her arsenal. And she achieved something not many people have a chance to brag about. She's recorded a first-place finish at that Utah state level in every level of gymnastics.
The new freshman had high regional places and a first place finish at Western Nationals when she competed Level 9. After that goal was reached and even surpassed, Yandow had one more thing she wanted to do.
"I wanted to get first at state at Level 10. That was my goal," said Yandow about wanting to complete her top state finish at every single level. And she did it.
But still, getting a gymnastics scholarship wasn't as easy as it should have been for a girl with the awards stacking up like Yandow had.
The main reason behind that problem was that during her junior year of high school, the main recruiting year, she didn't compete due to one of those many injuries she's suffered during her career.
Luckily, she had contacts at the BYU gym. Her close friend Natalie Eyre, now a sophomore with the Cougars, is one of BYU's top gymnasts, one coach Brad Cattermole plans on counting on quite a lot this year. She also knew the Cattermoles and they knew her gymnastics. That put it all together, and now Yandow, daughter of a track star and a cheerleader, is a freshman on the BYU gymnastics team.
Her favorite events — bars and vault — are some that have given the Cougars some trouble in the past few years, but this year Cattermole is happy to announce that barring an injury-plagued season like last year, he should have plenty of athletes on every event.
"Right now we need to find our strongest lineup and get kids opportunities to compete. We need to see where our strengths are and work on consistency and performing. As our season goes forward I want consistent team performances, meaning I don't want to count falls," said Cattermole about a team he has high hopes for this season.
By the end of the year, he's looking to make a return trip to regionals, which the team missed during a rare off-year last season, and he believes if everything goes well, they might even be able to sneak into nationals.
This season also the Cougars are going to do much of the same inasmuch as putting together a lineup where athletes are event competitors instead of all-arounders, but they also plan to get back into the all-around approach as well.
"We've got three seniors competing, and we're going to have two all-arounders," said Cattermole, who was very excited about the prospect of Megan Donehue and Danielle Goldman each competing in every event.
Eyre is also playing an important role in his plans as he'd like to have her competing in three or four events, giving the Cougars more than the individual event specialists they've had for the past few seasons.
Madeleine Johnson is also heading in an all-around direction as she should be on bars, beam and floor with a possibility of vault looming in the future.
But the thing he's most looking forward to is a little bit of depth.
"It's nice to have enough to pick and choose," said Cattermole, who had so many Cougars go down with injuries last season that not only couldn't he put entire lineups on some events, he was having to ask gymnasts to compete in events they hadn't been on in years.
This year the Cougars have seven or eight vaulters with 10.0 start values and "we can choose who's warming up well," he noted.
Incoming freshman Haylee Rollins is the Cougars' No. 2 vaulter currently and should be able to compete floor and uneven bars as well.
Jennifer Lezeu will tumble on the floor and beam, and Kaylee Gallup will definitely compete on beam but might add vault and floor as well.
Cattermole noted that while most of last year's injuries have healed, there are still a few lingering issues. Holland Davis was recently cleared to practice, and he hopes to have her back by the beginning of February.
Krysten Koval, who is returning from elbow surgery, was recently cleared to work out everything a month ago. Kara Munns will be out until midseason.
The Cougars first take to the mats against instate rival Southern Utah tonight at 7 in the Smith Fieldhouse in Provo. The T-Birds took both meetings with the Cougars last year.
Season opener
Southern Utah at BYU
7 p.m.Smith Fieldhouse, Provo
e-mail: jolsen@desnews.com