Blue Springs gymnast makes history at Auburn by performing historic stunt
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Sophia Bell upgraded Auburn vault rotation by landing a Yurchenko double.
- She became Auburn’s first gymnast and first Black gymnast to do it.
- Her Yurchenko double earned a 9.925 score and boosted team momentum.
From the time Sophia Bell was 3 years old, she was jumping off banisters onto couches.
Her parents found her a simple solution: gymnastics.
“I was actually not very good at all,” Bell told The Star with a laugh. “I was very bubbly, very powerful still, but my form was not necessarily there, and I also just did it.”
While lots of gymnasts have Olympic aspirations, Bell was in the sport for fun, eager to use her natural athleticism and power to learn various flips. After getting a taste of elite gymnastics as a teen, she dropped back down to Level 10, the final level of Junior Olympic Gymnastics before the Olympic level, to keep the sport enjoyable.
Bell had a decorated junior career, winning regional and state titles in the bars, floor, vault and all-around categories. She quickly caught the attention of college scouts, receiving up to 30 calls once her recruiting process opened, before committing to Auburn during her junior year of high school.
Bell, who trained at Xtreme Gymnastics in Lee’s Summit, is teammates with Marissa Neal, who trained at GAGE Center in Blue Springs and attended Blue Springs South High School.
A Fort Osage High School grad, Bell quickly became a key piece of Auburn’s rotation as a freshman last year, performing her floor routine in every meet. She earned All-Southeastern Conference freshman honors and vaulted 11 times, reaching a high score of 9.900. Auburn reached a regional final but was edged out of the top two winning spots by Missouri by a tenth of a point.
On the vault, Bell performed a Yurchenko full, a roundoff onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the vault table and then a flip off the apparatus with a full twist. Or she’d perform the same move with one-and-a-half twists. The move has become common in college gymnastics, and the highest score a gymnast can earn performing it is 9.95.
No gymnast in the history of the Auburn program had performed a Yurchenko double until Bell did so in last Friday’s season opener. And not only did she become the first Auburn gymnast to complete one, she became the first Black gymnast to do so at Auburn — a fact of which she is most proud.
“It was so emotional because I was writing my name into Auburn legacy,” she said.
How history came to be for Sophia Bell
After her first season of college competition, Bell was ready to move on from her freshman vault routine.
“I wanted to be able to train to my full potential,” she said, “because obviously a full (Yurchenko) was nowhere near what I could do.”
Her mother recommended the Yurchenko double, a move mastered by elite gymnasts who compete at the Olympic level, such as the decorated Simone Biles. Bell shrugged off the suggestion at first but came around and began training for it with her coaches.
Bell was confident in her skills by the time Auburn’s season opener rolled around against 23rd-ranked North Carolina State. But debuting the move in front of a sold-out home arena on Jan. 9 was very intimidating, she said.
The sophomore credits her school’s sports psychologists for giving her tools she needed to use her fear and anxiety to her benefit.
Before the meet, Bell visualized her routine as she stood at the end of the vault runway and walked across the blue carpet at Auburn’s Neville Arena. A teammate, Jersie Woolsey, reminded her she’d done the move successfully countless times in practice.
When Bell’s anxious breathing accelerates, she puts her hand on her stomach, where her ribs display a tattoo reading, “Feel the fear, do it anyway.”
“It’s definitely something that I struggled very hard with in the beginning of my freshman season,” Bell said, “because I pretended like the entire world was on my shoulders and I needed to be perfect.
“It’s the coaches and all of the sports staff here who have really been able to get through to me that you don’t have to be perfect.”
It all pays off in the season opener
Wearing a bedazzled white and blue leotard, Bell performed the historic Yurchenko double, sticking the landing with a final pose that showed her face full of emotion and pride.
Teammates ran toward her to celebrate the achievement.
“Because of the hardships I had had with vault, specifically my freshman year, it was kind of like all my progress and all of my hard work had actually finally paid off,” she said.
The move earned a 9.925 score, second-highest on the team, and Bell also recorded a 9.950 on her floor routine — tied for the best on the squad that evening.
“In that moment, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I did it like this,’” she said. “When I was high-fiving all of my teammates and everything; up in the crowd, my parents were jumping up and down and my dad was crying and my mom was crying.
“And I think it was really just a sense of pride to be able to represent everything I’ve always wanted to represent.”
While Bell celebrates her historic achievement, she also looks forward to accomplishing more goals over rest of the year. Her Auburn team started the season ranked No. 11 in the country.
In a powerhouse SEC whose teams feature several Kansas City-area gymnasts, a tough march awaits.
Bell’s ultimate goal is to lead Auburn to its first Final Four appearance in four years.
“Our team really, really does have the potential to go that far,” she said. “We can really get there. So I think Final Four, it will happen this year.”
