On The Road Again

After Roberson entered the portal on April 27, she immediately began taking recruiting trips. Many fans speculated that Roberson was only in the portal to reunite with the Landis in Georgia, her former Elite coaches. However, Roberson was not set on Georgia when she first entered the portal and wanted to explore every option available. She had a set criteria that each school had to achieve: strong academics, preexisting relationships from athletes and coaches on the team, and a school that would assist her in achieving her Elite gymnastics goals, such as competing at the LA 2028 Olympic Games. 

This criteria left her with five options: Georgia, UCLA, LSU, Florida, and Utah. She did not schedule a visit with Utah due to the distance of school and the lack of personal friendships on the team. She did schedule a trip to the other four schools but did not end up visiting LSU mostly due to her Elite gymnastic goals. While the Tigers would have supported Roberson in any avenue she chose, she felt training Elite at LSU would have been extremely self-driven. 

“I personally didn’t feel as secure in my elite career had I gone there,” Roberson said. “I just would have had to decide if that was a school I really wanted to go to, was I willing to maybe give up my Elite gymnastics goals a little bit, not that they weren’t going to support them. Elite gymnastics is hard, so I need someone to be there and support me and get me through those hard days. I felt like at LSU it was going to be really self-driven.”

Roberson landed on visiting Florida, UCLA, and Georgia. Each school provided her with an opportunity to continue training Elite gymnastics at the highest level, while achieving her NCAA and academic goals. Despite eventually committing to Georgia, Roberson originally had some reservations about the school. Roberson is pre-med majoring in exercise science, with the goal of eventually going to medical school. When she visited Georgia, she was concerned that they did not have a medical school on campus. 

“I told all the coaches, wherever I end up, I want to be there for a while,” Roberson said. “If I end up going to medical school, I want to go to that same medical school, so I was really bummed that Georgia didn’t have that. Their medical school is way off somewhere else, so I’d have to move again in two years. I’ve been moving a lot recently, I kind of want to just settle down and chill. I am talking about medical school, and wanting to go to medical school, and someone’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re opening one on campus this year!”

Roberson entered her official visits with many friends on each of the three teams. In Georgia, she was excited to reconnect with Brooke Pierson and Autumn Reingold who trained alongside her at WCC. Neither gymnast was present during Roberson’s visit giving her the opportunity to connect with her other future teammates. 

“I got to meet like three or four of the other girls, and we just clicked really, really well, right off the bat,” Roberson said. “This is a good fit for me, and I’m so excited.” 

Roberson had the unique experience of returning to recruiting visits with a different perspective. She entered each trip knowing exactly what she wanted to see from each school and was directing the trip this time around. 

“I know that schools can put on this big show, but I want to try to get under that and see what the actual school is like,” she said about her recruiting trips. “I think that was important for me to ask those questions, and I think it’s so hard for a sophomore in high school to even remotely know what a school is supposed to look like. So any school to them is going to look great and fantastic.”