This Article is From Feb 10, 2016

UCLA Gymnast Slips In Hip-Hop Moves, And The Online Crowd Goes Wild



The floor exercise in gymnastics is all about the tumbling, right? Sure, in between the runs the gymnast shows off balance or does balletlike moves, but that's just a moment for athletes and fans to catch their breath.

Sophina DeJesus of the University of California, Los Angeles, gymnastics team may have upset the floor exercise paradigm over the weekend, however. Her tumbling runs were spot on, but the moments in between are the main reason a Facebook video of her routine has been shared more than 400,000 times.

DeJesus set aside those normally staid moments in between the tumbling to whip, nae nae, hit the quan and perform other hip-hop dance steps.

The unexpected moves, combined with the enthusiastic reaction from the home fans and DeJesus' teammates on Saturday, made the video a must watch for hundreds of thousands and brought an outpouring of positive comments on social media.

"I love dancing," DeJesus said of her decision to try the unorthodox routine. "I wanted to end my senior year with a bang."

"My sister Savannah is an awesome dancer," she added. "She helped me with the choreo and made it more fun."

The floor exercise is not even DeJesus' best event; she was an all-American on bars, and she has made only limited floor appearances over her UCLA career. The performance that was widely shared on social media was her first floor exercise of the season.

It was a good day in general for the UCLA team, currently ranked No. 5 in the country, as it beat its Pac-12 rival, No. 7 Utah, by a narrow margin: 0.025 points.

Unsurprisingly, DeJesus, a 21-year-old sociology major from Temecula, California, has a dance and acting background. At 12, she performed on the TV show "Hip Hop Harry." "He was like Barney, but a hip-hop bear," DeJesus said. "We'd teach kids about the importance of drinking water, and stuff like that."

When dancing on the show, DeJesus said, she would be sure to throw in some gymnastics moves.

DeJesus' score for Saturday's routine, a 9.925, tied for third on her team at the meet, trailing two excellent - if less popular online - performances and raising the question of how much colorful moves help or hinder scoring from traditional judges.

Balance and dance moves in the floor exercises are often overlooked. "Commentators mostly talk about tumbling because it seems to be more impressive to an audience and it's easier to spot the deductions in landings, height and form," said Samantha Peszek, an Olympic silver medalist and a former UCLA teammate of DeJesus'.

DeJesus' innovation may not lead to perfect 10s, but "it is a subjective sport with human judges, so it doesn't hurt," Peszek said.

"The great thing about routines like Sophina's is that they bring energy and life not only to the audience, but the rest of the team watching," she added.

Would such crowd-pleasing moves actually hurt with more conservative judges? "The only time dance choreography would hurt a score is if it was inappropriate or if they considered it 'sloppy,'" Peszek said. "But most of the time if the entertainment value is in a floor routine, it can only help their score."

So at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, will we see Danes doing the Dougie and Serbs doing the Stanky Leg?

Probably not, Peszek said.

"There are way more requirements to an Olympic-level routine in terms of tumbling and leap elements, so there wouldn't be enough time to do as elaborate choreography as Sophina," she said. "Also, international judges seem to appreciate more traditional style of floor choreography, so a floor routine like this would not score as well as it does in collegiate competition."

The era of gymnastics nae nae is probably not over, though. DeJesus says that if selected for future meets, she plans to continue doing her routine.
© 2016, The New York Times News Service
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