NCAA vault champion David Sender says half the thrill is not knowing what’s going to happen, way up in the air. After he’s finished a round-off onto the springboard, then a back handspring into his vault and he’s partway through the final Yurchenko two-and-a-half twist, Sender doesn’t have a lot of time to make adjustments before landing.
“I like to scare myself a little bit,” the junior biological sciences major adds. “You wouldn’t be in this if you weren’t a thrill seeker.”
Eleven-time All-American Tabitha Yim thinks the ultimate athletic rush might be surfing 20-foot-high walls of water at Mavericks, off the coast at Half Moon Bay. But until the day she suits up and paddles out, she’s okay with indoor acrobatics, ripping “flight” skills on a 4-inch-wide piece of wood set four feet off the hardwood gym floor. “I enjoy the [balance] beam the most because I get the most nervous on it,” Yim notes. “You really feel satisfied because you know how nerve-wracking it is.”
Sender anchored the men’s gymnastics team that took third place at this year’s NCAAs, and Yim became the most decorated female gymnast in school history when the Cardinal women earned a fifth-place finish at their NCAA tournament.
Attired in new competition leotards (sewn by Yim’s mother) with a sparkly red Superman “S” on front, the women staked out a goal early in the season: they would perform all 24 routines every time they practiced and competed. They handed out T-shirts with a 24 logo to fans at home games, and every time a gymnast landed her routine, someone in the “24 club” stood up in the stands. “By the end of the meet, you had 24 [fans] standing.”
After missing the NCAA championships for two years, the Cardinal women finished second in the Pac-10 conference and won their NCAA regional competition. At nationals in April, they hit all 24 routines—two nights in a row—and placed fifth overall with 196.825, just four-tenths of a point behind second-place finisher Utah (197.25). “The team went on a mission together, to get back to nationals and make a statement,” says head coach Kristen Smyth.
Noting that Yim is “probably one of the best floor performers of all time,” Smyth says that when she competed to the music of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s Diablo Rojo, “every single person in the arena turned to watch, and everyone was clapping.” Yim’s take? “My teammates were going crazy on the side, and I think they just sucked everyone in, to clap with them.”
The men’s gymnastics team (22-5) repeated last year’s success at nationals by placing third, and also won two individual titles— Alex Schorsch on rings and defending champion Sender on vault. “David’s win was definitely the highlight,” says head coach Tom Glielmi. “He was sick, and it was very impressive to see his tenacity and determination.”
It’s an unforgiving sport, where every move has to look fluid and effortless, and points are deducted if gymnasts “look like they’re muscling or struggling,” says Glielmi. For Sender, that has meant learning to control his emotions on the floor. And it sometimes helps to talk to the pommel horse.
“Okay, it’s a weird thing,” he says. “But the horse has always been my Achilles heel, so I’ve worked on it more than all the other events combined. And I’ve spent so much time on the horse that it’s almost developed a personality. I don’t know if [talking to it] is about trying to calm myself down before I go out, or just that I’m actually trying to communicate with it.”
Sender competed on the junior national team for three years, and has been on the senior U.S. team since 2004. This summer, while many of his teammates are taking time off, he’ll be in the mix at a number of international meets and hoping to qualify for the Pan American Games.
“You’ve got to make sure your [routines] have a nice flow, and make them look as nice as you can,” Sender adds. And when the adrenaline kicks in, the future veterinarian says, it helps to talk nicely to the horsie.
