Four months after an ankle injury took her out of the team and vault finals at the World Championships in Antwerp, Joscelyn Roberson of the U.S. is coming back with confidence and new skills for the Olympic year.
Born February 8, 2006, in Texarkana, Texas, Roberson trains under coaches Laurent Landi and Cecile Canqueteau-Landi at World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas. Her top domestic results include gold on vault at the 2022 and 2023 Winter Cup, a qualification meet for the U.S. Championships; and gold on vault and seventh place all-around at the 2023 U.S. Championships.
2023 was Roberson’s international breakout year. She won gold on vault and in the team event, and silver on floor exercise, at the DTB Pokal Team Challenge in Stuttgart; gold on vault and floor exercise, and silver on balance beam, at the World Cup of Cairo; gold on floor exercise and in the team event, and silver on vault and balance beam, at the Pan American Championships in Medellin; and gold in the team final at the World Championships in Antwerp.
This interview with Joscelyn Roberson is the last in a series of six conducted at the recent U.S. women’s national team training camp in Katy, Texas.
Q: Where are you in terms of recovery and getting back to full routines?
JR: I have all my skills back, but that’s relatively new. I’m starting parts on bars, but other than that, we’re doing skills and trying to get all of them back, and getting clean and consistent again.
Q: Do you have any restrictions, as far as what you can do right now?
JR: No.
Q: Are you really excited to be able to go full-force?
JR: It’s been a long journey. To the outside it might seem fast, but for me it felt like eons, where I was just doing the same things every day. I’m so excited to finally be back and training new skills, and getting back to where I was.
Q: Do you think that, with the injury, you got to slow down and get some much-needed rest?
JR: Definitely. I feel this was God’s way of saying, “Hey, chill out. You need to be ready for next year.” Just take this time and focus on everything else that (I) couldn’t focus on throughout the year, like family, friends, school. Everything was so centered on gymnastics last year that everything else was like a second thought or an afterthought. I feel like having that time in the boot – I was in a boot for seven to eight weeks – (gave me) time to catch up on school, go home and see my family. They obviously wanted to see me because I just came home from Worlds. I’d done such a good job getting to that point, so it was really good to be able to slow down and see them again, do school and focus on that.
Q: If you’re getting back into your routines, Winter Cup (February 25-28) is probably not on your radar…
JR: I’m not competing at Winter Cup, but after that, everything’s up in the air. I definitely will be at (U.S.) Classic and (U.S.) Championships.
Q: You have a lot of difficult skills in the first place, and you made a world championships team with those skills. Is the mindset of this year, after the injury, that you’re going to focus on those routines? Or are you going to try to add more upgrades?
JR: I already have a couple more upgrades, so they were kind of new as I was coming back. I was also getting them at the same time. I didn’t think I would be able to get any new upgrades, but knowing that I have some new stuff in my book, even though I did get injured, is really fun and exciting for me. Most of them are on bars but I do have a new tumbling pass on floor. I have a laid-out full out dismount (on bars) now onto soft (mat) because obviously I can’t land on hard yet. It’s really cool I’m hoping to post a little part soon (on social media).
Q: What incentive did you have to select your new floor music?
JR: I wanted the same vibe, but more mature and different. So it’s going to be still fun but a little more mature and a little more sassy. It’ll be really fun to see.
Q: What inspired you to learn a layout full-out off bars?
JR: That was always something I said I was absolutely never going to do because I was so scared of it. It was kind of like my (layout) double-double (on floor) in the same sense. I was very scared of it and I always thought I would get lost doing it. When I got injured, I was doing my dismounts, just coming back, going into the pit. Laurent gave me the side-eye, and I was like, “No, I’m not doing it.” He was like, “What are you talking about? I want you to do Jaegers,” because I was doing Jaegers at the same time. I was like, “Oh, OK, I’ll do that.” And he was like, “Now I’m curious – what did you not want to do?” I didn’t want to twist my dismount. He was like, “Oh, it’s OK. It’s not that different. It’s not that much harder.” I was like, “Great, so I don’t have to do it.” And he was like, “No, no, no, we’ll still do it, but it’s not that big of a deal.”
Every day after my dismount he would joke around and say, “Are you going to twist it today?” For a good two weeks, I was like, “No, I’m not doing that.” And then he said, “Today’s the day, you’re actually going to twist the dismount.” I was like, “OK.” I tried it and it wasn’t that bad. It’s been getting better and better, but I never thought I’d ever do that skill. I mentioned that I didn’t want to and I didn’t think I would be able to, and he hates when I say I don’t think I can. That’s usually how those skills come about, like my layout double-double (on floor exercise), my full-in and all those things. It got pretty good, and he was like, “I think that’s worth it.” It’s only a tenth higher in difficulty, but I feel I do it really well, so we’ll see if it makes it into the routine or not.
Q: On bars, besides the dismount, is there anything else new going on?
JR: Not necessarily new, but I am adding more into it. I have a free hip-Shaposh(nikova) now, which is new. I’ve never competed it before. But I think I’m going to be adding back in my Tkatchev, which is going to be fun. And keeping my Jaeger, and everything else the same.
Q: Do you feel the gains you’ve made on bars are still the same, even after the injury?
JR: Yes. I’m very excited about that, and I feel I’m getting even better and cleaner on bars.
Q: Has Laurent’s coaching method or style with you changed as you’ve gotten to know each other better?
JR: I can bicker with him a little bit more, like with the full-out (dismount on bars). Like with the laid-out full-in and double-double, I got there (to WCC) so soon and he made me do it about two weeks into being there, so I didn’t tell him no, obviously. I was like, “I have to try.” He always has that way of breaking down my wall of fear and getting me to try it. I don’t know how, because nobody’s been able to do it before.
Q: When you first got (to WCC), did you talk to Simone (Biles) and some of the older girls to figure out how Laurent and Cecile work?
JR: I didn’t really ask them about that, but if you ask some people, they’ll tell you I’m really observant. So I really watch how people interact with others, and how their relationships are, and figure out how they respond to certain things. I feel that was the biggest things.
Q: How did your Worlds experience translate into motivating you for this year?
JR: It was awesome getting to watch the finals, and watch Simone and be in her corner. I feel I got a different experience from the other girls because I was her roommate, and I am her teammate at home. So getting to see how she works and how she kept herself fresh and able to do gymnastics was really good. I’ll be taking how she goes down and comes back up, and her training, into my own training. Also, also the downtime I took getting to see how the other girls interact was really awesome. I also ate a lot of chocolate!
Q: What was the biggest thing you took away from that up-close perspective with Simone?
JR: Just realizing that gymnastics doesn’t have to be in your life 24/7. You can shut it off and do something else or talk about something else. I’m sure that, when I was younger, all I did was talk about gymnastics or think about gymnastics, and it really wore me out once I got older. So knowing you can shut that off for a little bit and do anything else other than that. (For example) I feel we talked about Gossip Girl (the original series, not the reboot) or Vampire Diaries every night, which was really awesome.
International Gymnast Online contributing photojournalist and former U.S. team member Lisa Cawthron placed third all-around and first on vault at the 1977 U.S. Championships, eighth all-around and sixth on vault at the 1977 World Cup in Oviedo, Spain, and second to Nadia Comaneci on floor exercise at the 1977 U.S. vs. Romania dual meet.
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