Before her floor routine, Utah senior gymnast MaKenna Merrell-Giles will look for teammate Sydney Soloski. They make eye contact and flex their muscles at each other, a ritual that Merrell-Giles said is the final touch in her preparation.
“She is always talking to me and encouraging me,” Merrell-Giles said. “She is such a positive person, she helps me so much.”
In the last half of the season, Soloski’s support has moved more from the mental kind to the physical one as she has become not just a key participant in the floor lineup but also the balance beam.