Intense athletes get this look in their eyes. Winning is their business, and they mean business. You may not expect to see this kind of look on a 9-year-old’s face, but Jace Perero has it.
In the world of gymnastics, Perero is a relative newcomer. Where most competitors have been tumbling pretty much since they could walk, she began 18 months ago. She had had a bit of exposure to kiddie gymnastics while her parents were stationed in Japan, but it wasn’t until moving to Vandenberg that she became serious about it.
It started with a second-grade birthday party at the gymnastics gymnasium at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Perero had a bunch of fun at the gym and asked her parents if she could join.
“It was kind of hard at first,” she said with a typical kid understatement.
She had just entered a sport that required total body coordination and use of muscles most people don’t even know they have—but that’s not what was hard for her.
“I was nervous most of the time,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
But that’s all over now. Her nerves have been settled by familiarity with the sport and with the friends she’s made through it. Her friends are also where a lot of her motivation to train comes from.
“If I see them do it and it’s possible, then I think I can do it,” she said.
Perero trains a lot—and not just a lot for a child. It’s a lot for anybody. During the competition season, her only day off is Thursday. She trains 12 hours a week and competes on the weekends. By Wednesday, she’s sore and looking forward to her break. But despite the soreness, Perero said she’s never felt like quitting because it was too hard. The only time she considered stopping was when she wanted to get involved in more school activities, but she stuck with it.
“Last year, she had a persisting wrist issue,” said Perero’s father, Melchor.
She tried to compete through the injury.
“We had to tell her to take it easy and heal off a little bit,” he explained.
Not quite at the age to start really examining career goals, Perero knows that she wants to continue with gymnastics for a long time and would also like to learn to play the guitar. Of course, like most budding athletes, she does want to go as far as she can and be the best: She’d like to go to the Olympics.
In meets, she has done very well. At the Peace Love & Gymnastics Invitational in Valencia on Sept. 24, she placed first on beam and shattered the club All Around score record, with a 36.10. Her most recent meet was at the Gold Coast Gym in Burbank where she placed second overall again with a first on beam.
“I call her the Queen of Beam,” Melchor said. “The girl that just blew everybody out tied with her on beam … .”
Sadly, the Perero family will be stationed in Japan come January, but they hope to find a gym where their daughter can keep competing.
This article appears in Oct 20-27, 2011.