Local gymnasts find rare next level success

When it comes to earning a spot to compete in athletics after high school, gymnastics is not like most other sports. There just aren’t that many universities with gymnastics programs.

“I would tell you every gymnast that starts gymnastics thinks they're going to the Olympics, like it's not a far-fetched,” said Bridgette Scholljergedes, gymnastics coach and the owner of Elevate Gymnastics and Athletics. “Right now, they take five girls every four years. Your chances of going to the Olympics are like zero percent, and college gymnastics is actually one of the hardest sports. I think there's less than 400 spots in the country.”

Southern New Mexico is not really the place college coaches go to recruit gymnasts. That’s what makes the accomplishments of Mila Noopila and Rylie Barrios so amazing. The two Las Cruces High seniors train with Scholljergedes. Next up for both is that rarest of accomplishments for a New Mexico high school athlete—college gymnastics.

Noopila will attend school and compete at Wisconsin – Eau Claire, and Barrios is headed to SUNY Brockport in New York.

“You have to be level 10 to get recruited and this is my third year of level 10,” Noopila said. “I started the recruiting process when I was a level 9. I started an Instagram page, which kind of just helped me promote my gymnastics through videos. Then once I got my level 10 skills, and I started to go to competitions and camps, which I met college coaches, that's how I started to get in touch with the college gymnastics setting.”

Scholljergedes is a physical therapist by day, but the owner of Elevate Gymnastics and Athletics, formerly Zero Gravity, in her “spare” time. She has been coaching and judging gymnastics competitions for two decades, and she decided to buy the gym at which she had begun coaching Mila.

“I've been with Mila since she was six years old as a level three beginner competitive gymnast,” she said. “Rylie transitioned over and I started to coach her probably when she was eight, so probably I've been with her nine years.”

She has seen these two young athletes throughout their growth as gymnasts and she knows what it takes for them, or anyone, to succeed in the gym. Noopila started with the sport when she was three years old.

“I used to live in the Mesilla Park neighborhood, where Elevate, it used to be called Zero Gravity, is located,” Mila said. “We would take a lot of walks around the neighborhood with my parents, and they were just opening Zero Gravity at the time. Apparently, my sister and I were begging to start gymnastics so my mom went back and they said the youngest they take is five years old. So my mom said, ‘If you're not going to take them both, then it's fine.’ We started to walk away and then they said it was fine, and they’d take me as well.”

That was part of a beautiful friendship between the Noopila sisters.

“I like that I was able to share a sport with my sister,” Mila said. “We were able to be together a lot, our whole childhood, we would hang out a lot and we shared the same friends. We made a lot of memories.”

Barrios doesn’t recall this all that well, but her parents tell her that she begged to do gymnastics when she was a child. Noopila was part of her conversion process.

“I had Mila at school, and I didn't know her just yet, but she was in my class and she would teach me floor routines at school and stuff,” Rylie said. "She did the bar routines because we had one of those playground bars. At that level the coaches figured out that I had all the skills, so she actually helped me become a gymnast too.”

When Rylie was really little, like three years old, she tried ballet, and she also tried soccer.

“I really liked soccer, but it got to the point where I had to choose between soccer and gymnastics, and I chose gymnastics.”

“Gymnastics is a sport of strength, discipline, dedication,” Scholljergedes said. “Gymnastics is about super mental toughness and preparation. You’re having your body do things it absolutely shouldn't be doing, so it’s about convincing your brain that it's safe and it's fun and it's great.

“Mila is one of the most like mentally tough gymnasts, and she set her goal very young to get to college gymnastics, even in this little, tiny town and I’ve kind of moved up with her. She said, ‘I want to get to this level. What do I need to do?’ Mila used every resource. She did her own strength training. She did her own nutrition training. She did some even mindset training. She's a disciplined worker.”

Rylie came to the sport a little later, but she is an amazing athlete and an extremely hard worker. Mila mentored her a little along the way, and they have reached the same level, training together for the last few years. It hasn’t always been an easy road.

“They both had their times of injury,” Scholljergedes said. “Each one of them was out a season with injury along the way. Like most gymnasts where they're 4.0 students, they're super disciplined, they're super intelligent, they're coordinated. They're going to excel at any other sport they do, and she just put her whole heart and energy and effort and dedication into gymnastics.”

Mila and Rylie will head off to college training to compete in the all-around, but it’s at that level where some specialization starts to happen.

“Mila has an amazing bar routine,” Scholljergedes said. “She has a skill that not very many people do. Rylie is the most powerful vaulter. It's huge. In general you are always an all-arounder. But now in college, most of them don't do all around.”

For Noopila, she loves all the events, but it’s really all about the bars.

“My favorite thing about gymnastics is bars, the uneven bars,” Mila said. “Bars is my favorite. I was just thinking to myself a couple of months ago, I love gymnastics because it's what I've done for my whole life but I don't know if I would have as much love for it as I do now if bars wasn't an event.”

Perhaps the characteristic that most sets Mila and Rylie apart is their love of being in the gym.

“My favorite part is training,” Rylie said. “I love being at practice, but I do like competing too. I feel like if it's really good and there's a fun environment, I do like competing a lot.”