Alta duo earns scholarships in gymnastics

They spend hours each day after school perfecting their sport. And while most of their classmates have never seen them compete, two Alta athletes have earned scholarships to attend their favorite colleges.

Baylie Divino and Summer Raymond recently accepted scholarship offers to attend Southern Utah University and Brigham Young University, respectively. The duo competes in gymnastics.

“It is great to see both girls get scholarships,” said Mary Wright, who coaches the two girls at Olympus Gymnastics in Sandy. “Only about 10 percent of those trying to get on college teams make it.”

Gymnastics is not a sport offered at the high school level in Utah. Those that want to excel at it have to do so at clubs found outside school.

 “A lot of girls do gymnastics when they are young, but then they lose interest,” Wright said. “There is a lot of peer pressure as they become teenagers to quit the rigorous training that gymnastics requires and go ‘hang out’ with friends. Those that stay in it and are dedicated to it have great chances of getting scholarships. These two girls exemplify what can happen when you stick with something.”

But it nearly wasn’t on the radar for Divino, a senior at Alta. The 5-foot athlete had tried gymnastics once when she was 3 years old, but moved on to other interests. She wanted to return when she was about 10, but her parents were leery of it.

“It was a hard decision for us, said Kelli Divino, Baylie’s mother. “We had heard horror stories of what kids have to go through to compete in gymnastics, and we didn’t want her to do it.”

But she and husband Ron allowed Baylie to try a class. The coach at the time told the Divinos Baylie would be good in the sport.

“The coach said ‘She is really talented and she should try,’” Kelli Divino said. “We agonized over it, but eventually went with it. She fell in love with the sport and luckily, none of those horror stories came true.”

Baylie Divino found a niche in her new sport and quickly began to excel.

“The feeling I get when performing is what keeps me going,” she said.

Although she competes in several gymnastics disciplines, Divino favors the vault.

The vault just seems to come naturally to me,” she said.

Despite practicing about 25 hours weekly in her sport, Divino has kept her grades up sufficiently enough to maintain membership in Alta’s National Honor Society.

“I try to study after gymnastics and on the weekends,” she said.

Divino hopes to go into the medical field after college.

Raymond began earlier in gymnastics and has kept with it throughout. Growing up in Chicago, Ill., Raymond began her gymnastics career at 2 years old.

“I was a crazy kid that did crazy things,” Raymond said. “My mom was afraid I would end up hurting myself. So she signed me up for gymnastics so I could do all my crazy things in a controlled way.”

Her family moved to Draper when she was in first grade, where she found a new gymnastics club.

Raymond prefers the uneven bars and the balance beam because both play to her 5-foot-five” frame, a little taller than most gymnasts.

“I have a longer body so it is easier for me on those than the floor routine,” she said.