Tiny Arcadian Reaches for the Sky

Arcadia’s Mirai Nagasu got our community a lot of attention when she became the U.S. national figure skating champion in 2008 at the age of 14 and was later one the favorites at the 2010 Winter Olympics, where she finished fourth.

Arcadia now has a young gymnast who, her coaches say, has “unlimited potential.”

Her name is Karina Ho. She is 7 years old and all of 3 feet 11 inches tall and weighs in at around 45 pounds. She will enter the third grade at in the fall.

In May she placed first in a statewide all-around competition in Culver City. She followed that up in late June with an all-around second place in a national competition at Indian Wells.

Might she be headed for a future Summer Olympics?

“I don’t know,” she meekly said the other day at the Vernon Lee Amateur Gymnastics Academy in Pasadena, where she has been honing her skills since she was 4.

“She has really blossomed in just the past few months,” said Monique Wiesmuller, who works with young Karina on almost a daily basis at the Vernon Lee gym. Karina’s other coaches include Luzia Wiesmuller, Monique’s mother, Vanessa Schmidtke, and Cindy Gonzales.

Luzia Wiesmuller runs the Vernon Lee gym, which has been in operation since 1993.

“Karina was very shy and very nervous when she first came here,” Luzia said. “She has really come out of her shell, and I believe the reason for that is gymnastics.” 

Karina’s parents are Gary Ho, a financial analyst at JPL in Pasadena, and his wife Janine, a special education teacher’s aide at Camino Grove Elementary School in Arcadia. 

Janine says they got Karina, the youngest of their three children, into gymnastics so she would have something to do. The couple had no idea they had a budding superstar on their hands.

That became apparent at the U.S. Association of Independent Gymnastics Clubs (USAIGC) competitions at Culver City and Indian Wells. In the nationals at Indian Wells, Karina and Dahlia Castaneda, 8, of Pasadena led the Vernon Lee team to a first-place finish in the Copper Level class during the meet that ran from June 25-July 1.

The Vernon Lee team also had the all-around champion in the Gold Level – Chrystal Yen, 17, of San Marino. 

Karina’s best individual events in her class at Indian Wells were the uneven bars, where she placed second with a score of 9.00, and the vault, where she was third at 9.15. Her score in the all-around competition was 36.050, which was .725 points behind the winner. There were 26 competitors in her class. 

The USAIGC nationals next year are in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Karina is anxiously awaiting that competition. As for the Olympics, that might be a pipe dream. But for those who have seen tiny Karina Ho in action, there’s no harm in thinking big.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the "2018" Summer Olympics in South Korea. The Summer Olympics take place in 2016; the 2018 Winter Olympics take place in South Korea. Patch regrets the error.