The Barometer Online

Issue date: 2/11/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Cory Reed Mandi Rodriguez anchors the Oregon State gymnastics teams' floor lineup. Rodriguez scored a near perfect 9.950 last week against Arizona State.

In athletics, tradition and ritual is common practice, a practice that gymnast Mandi Rodriguez takes very seriously.

Take a glance at the tall junior from Baldwin Park, Calif. as her teammates take to the floor exercise. She is off by herself focusing and visualizing her routine, turning full attention to her fellow gymnasts as they dance around the floor. As a teammate prepares for a tumbling pass, Rodriguez prepares also, looking away nervous for them but understanding they are about to nail the skills they present.

As the Oregon State floor lineup begins to wind down, Rodriguez and senior Jami Lanz are the final two to compete. Rodriguez makes her way back to the team and finds Lanz. "Let's talk," she says, and the two find themselves alone. The two gymnasts and team leaders together just minutes before completing their floor routines to pray for one another.

"Since maybe my first meet my freshmen year, we say a little prayer before we go," Rodriguez said. "It is to calm us down and ask that we are kept safe and that we can show the arena and ourselves what we are capable of. It allows us to be confident in each other and with ourselves."

While rituals are nothing new in sports, they are something that Rodriguez began to strongly adopt when she arrived in Corvallis. Rodriguez does not believe that her sometimes-ritualistic nature really makes an overall difference in her performance, but she still feels the importance of her rituals.

"It really developed in college," Rodriguez said. "With college gymnastics, it is a lot different because you have 14 meets a year rather than five or six meets. You have to find something that works; I do treatment every day even if nothing is hurting me. It is not that I don't think I can't do it without [those rituals], but it is something I found works for me."

Entering her freshman year at a traditionally strong gymnastics school, Rodriguez was a decorated gymnast. Holding dual-citizenship in the United States and Mexico, she was given the opportunity to compete in the Mexican National Championships in 2004. Rodriguez was a stranger as she entered into a competition with the top gymnasts in Mexico.

Continued...

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