Joscelyn Roberson can’t remember much of the London Olympics. She was only six years old in 2012, and although she already loved gymnastics, she couldn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of the event. There is one thing, though, that she remembers vividly: her instant love of Jordyn Wieber.
“It was the weirdest feeling, and it’s really hard to explain,” Roberson said of watching Wieber, a member of the Fierce Five, compete at the Olympic Games. “I wanted to be right beside her so bad. It was this crazy intense feeling. I remember telling myself, ‘I have to be good enough one day to meet her.’”
Roberson soon became serious about her gymnastics dream. She quickly climbed through the rankings, moving from level 4 to level 8 in only two years. In 2019 she qualified elite and competed at the U.S. national championships in both 2021 and 2022. Wieber, in the meantime, retired from elite, graduated from UCLA and eventually became head coach at Arkansas in 2019.
Ten years after Roberson was starstruck watching Wieber at the London Olympics, one shared passion made the two women’s paths cross once again: college gymnastics.
As an aspiring college recruit, Roberson saw Wieber twice before getting to speak to her. The first time was at the Metroplex Challenge in 2019, when Wieber was still coaching at UCLA. It was the first time that Roberson felt completely “starshot.” The second time was in June 2022 when Wieber came to her gym to watch her train. She felt an immense amount of pressure. “I told my teammates, ‘You have to hide me, I can’t do this.’ I was so scared,” Roberson recalled.
Then on June 15, the first day of her official recruitment, Roberson was contacted by 13 different colleges, one of them Arkansas where she got to talk to Wieber for the first time. “We got on a FaceTime, and I was freaking out,” she said. “I was like, ‘I just have to tell you, you’re my favorite gymnast of all time, so it’s crazy that I’m talking to you today.’”
Roberson and Wieber met in person on Roberson’s official visit to Arkansas. Wieber turned out to be everything Roberson had dreamed of, but as the time to make her college decision approached, Roberson found it extremely hard to choose her future home. She also paid official visits to Oklahoma and Michigan, and she ended up loving all three of them equally.
Roberson was methodical in the choice of the three colleges she visited. She decided to pick a college that was excellent at gymnastics, one that was great at academics and a third that was a mixture of both. She had amazing experiences on all three of her visits, which made her final decision extremely difficult.
“I think I changed my mind probably 30,000 times. One day I would be this way, the next day I would feel different,” Roberson recalled. “It came down to, ‘I have to be there for four years, where could I see myself? If something went wrong, where would be the better place for me to be? And if something really good were to happen, would I want to be far away from my family or would I want to be just a drive away so I can go and celebrate with them?’”
The answer to all of Roberson’s questions was Arkansas. She fell in love with the gymnastics facilities, the team, the assistant coaches and, of course, Wieber. Plus, she thought the Razorbacks had a good pre-medical and medical program, and she loved the modern campus. “It really came down to, I really want to be close to my family,’” she explained. “Everything about Arkansas was so amazing. I’m really happy with my decision.”
At Arkansas, she hopes to help her team win its first team national title and, individually, she would love to win a national title on beam. Although for many gymnasts beam is the most difficult apparatus, for Roberson it’s the event where she’s most at ease. “I’ve never been scared of beam,” she explained. “I thought that was normal until I started going to champs and talking to the girls and everybody was like, ‘Oh beam is so scary.’ [Instead] the girls are not scared of bars, which is crazy to me—I’ve been so scared of bars since I was little. I think what helps me the most [is that] I don’t really get nervous on beam. It’s like my comfort place.”
Given her love of beam, it’s unsurprising that Roberson’s favorite moment of her career was winning the beam title at U.S. nationals in 2021, her final year as a junior. That meet felt like redemption to Roberson, who had failed to qualify to nationals in 2019. On top of the win, she also finished fourth in the all-around and was named to the Pan American Games team, an achievement that left her “on cloud nine.”
The following year, Roberson competed at nationals as a senior for the first time. She enjoyed herself, but she felt the atmosphere was much more loaded with nerves and expectations. In particular, she found it “nerve-wracking” to compete against Olympians, as they were the same gymnasts she’d been looking up to her entire life.
Nevertheless, the experience served as motivation for Roberson, who has big elite dreams before going to college. She would like to make the national team and an international assignment again, as well as to be named to the world championship team. Ultimately, she would love to be a member of the Olympic team, just like her idol, Wieber.
Although Roberson knows that her dreams are extremely difficult to achieve, she trusts the process. “I would tell [my younger self] to keep making the decisions she’s making because [she’s] going in the right direction,” she said. If her six-year-old self could see her now, following in Wieber’s footsteps, she added, she “would be so happy. It’s an amazing feeling to know that I’m gonna make my small self proud.”
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Article by Talitha Ilacqua
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