All That Jazzy: Berkeley Gymnast Wins National Championship

Berkeley gymnast Jazmyn Foberg is the new junior national gymnastics all-around champion.

Foberg, 14, a high school freshman this fall who’s known to family and friends as Jazzy, scored a 114.95 in the all-around competition at the P&G U.S. Junior National Championships in Pittsburgh on Saturday, edging Nia Dennis of Westerville, Ohio, by 45-hundredths of point for the title. Dennis finished with a 114.50. Norah Flatley of Cummings, Iowa, was third with an all-around score of 112.55.

Winning the all-around championship also earned Foberg, amember of MG Elite at Monmouth Gymnastics in Morganville, a spot on the U.S. Junior National team -- a step toward possibly competing in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Foberg, who is coached by Maggie Haney and Victoria Levine and was competing at the national championships for the first time, was consistent on her routines on a day when most of the competitors struggled to find that consistency. Foberg sealed her victory with a solid vault on the final rotation that was rewarded with her highest score of the weekend, a 14.95.

That left Dennis, who was fourth at the junior nationals in 2013, needing a 15.55 on the floor, her final apparatus, to close the gap, but she scored a 15.10 to finish second.

Foberg started the second day of the competition on the uneven parallel bars, putting up a score of 14.45, including an 8.55 score for execution. But the bars proved to be the downfall for many of the competitors during the two days, and Foberg, who scored a 14.40 on the bars Thursday, won the event.

Dennis, who was sitting in third place after Thursday’s first round, started on the vault and scored a 14.90 to follow a 15.10 score from Thursday to win the vault title. She had the bars in the second rotation, and after she scored a 13.50 on the bars Thursday with 7.7 for execution, Dennis rebounded Saturday in that apparatus with an 8.85 execution score for a 14.65.

That put Dennis in the lead after two rotations.

But it was the balance beam that turned out to be the key. Foberg was on the beam for the second rotation, and scored a 13.85 on Saturday, 35-hundredths of a point lower than her beam score on Thursday, but using the same routine.

Dennis had a high-difficulty beam routine on Thursday, rated a 6.0, but was unable to pull it off, scoring just a 7.70 on execution for a 13.70. Saturday, Dennis was on the beam in the third rotation and reduced the difficulty of her routine to a 5.3. But the reduction in difficulty cost her, as Dennis wasn’t able to improve her execution score significantly, earning a 7.75 for a total of 13.05.

The swing in beam scores left Foberg leading 100.00 to 99.15 entering the final rotation, which had her on the vault and Dennis on her other strong event, floor.

Foberg sprinted down the runway and performed a solid Yurchenko vault (a back handspring onto the springboard before hitting the vaulting table with her hands and flipping before landing) that the event commentators noted showed her power because of her distance on the landing, and earned a 9.15 execution score on the 5.8-difficulty move for a 14.95.

Then she had to wait for Dennis, who was on the floor for her final apparatus, to perform, and while Dennis’ routine had a 6.0 difficulty, she received a 9.1 for execution -- not enough to close the gap.

Foberg’s MG Elite teammate and fellow Bayville resident, Ariana Agrapides, who the commentators said was recovering from an injury and therefore limited in the competition, improved from 34th after Thursday to finish 21st overall.

(Photo by John Cheng, USA Gymnastics)