As the fourth gymnast on floor in the opening rotation, Southern Utah freshman Berlin Hall saluted the judges to begin her routine. Before her routine starts her mind is quiet, but once the music begins, Hall is able to do what she loves most: perform.
When Hall was going through the recruiting journey, she was seeking the perfect team culture. On her visits, every school was always nice to her, but the team dynamic at Southern Utah stood out, and she knew it was the place she wanted to spend the next four years.
When she moved on campus she became fast friends with all of her teammates and quickly found a love for life in Cedar City, Utah. When she first arrived, she was pleasantly surprised by how open everyone was to invite people anywhere. She felt that love that everyone had for one another both on campus and in the gym. The coaches preach “one family, one fight,” and it is the perfect phrase to describe the friendly team dynamic.
Hall came to Southern Utah this past fall with the expectations of being a star on floor. The freshman is a former three-star recruit that excelled on floor in club, and was looking to bring that prowess to the college stage. She had to grow accustomed to the college gymnastics training regime first though. Going from training countless hours in club to having a cap on practice hours in college took some getting used to, and Hall had to learn “how to be a little bit more intentional” with how she practices.
Competing at her first college home meet was no different to Hall, as she has always had a love for competition. What was different was how her college coaches prepared for the meet and how superstitious they are. For example, she remarked that this year “We are now not allowed to play “I Believe That We Will Win” by Pitbull before meets because we do bad when we play [it].” That was something that took a while for Hall to understand and she just had to play along with the superstitions.
Early in the season Hall competed on both vault and floor, but a knee injury caused her to focus on just the latter. That decision paid off, as over the course of the season Hall won the conference freshman of the week award six of the 10 possible weeks and became the top floor worker in the conference. At the end of the regular season, she was named the 2026 MPSF Freshman of the Year. Perhaps the superstitions worked.
Experiencing postseason gymnastics for the first time has been a fun experience for Hall. She loves to perform, and each additional competition allows her more time to do exactly that. Head coach Scott Bauman has preached that in college, the number one goal is to have fun, and being on the floor at the Tempe regional was the epitome of having fun to Hall.
Going into the offseason and the first season in the Pac-12, Hall is looking to break into more lineups. Getting back into the vault lineup is her main focus, with beam right behind. In terms of bars, when Hall first arrived at campus, her coach told her she would never have to touch bars again if she didn’t want to, but Hall enjoys the event and wanted to at least keep training it. When discussing her bars training, she said “we’ve kind of broken down every single skill and slowly gotten better. So, if I’m ever able to compete bars in my college career, I would consider that a huge win.”
Southern Utah ended its season with a fourth-place finish in its session at Tempe. While this season is over for her, Hall still has three more seasons to perform fantastic floor routines and work hard at improving her other three events, all while having fun along the way.
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Article by Alyssa Van Auker
