Kiersten Wang: Engineering a successful senior season
Thursday, March 12, 2015 | Gymnastics
By Eden Otero, UF Communications
For senior Kiersten Wang, the world is one big puzzle.
From her schooling to her work in the gym, Wang sees the world the way a civil engineer would see it – in pieces.
“I get very excited when things are a challenge,” Wang said. “I'm very analytical. I'm very logical about stuff. So if something happens and it doesn't make sense to me because it's just really out there, I get really frustrated because it's not the most logical way to go about it.”
After sitting out the 2014 season with two abductor tears to her right leg, Wang made it back into the Florida lineup for her final year with the gymnastics team to help lead the squad in the midst of two major injuries – teammate Jamie Shisler's torn Achilles tendon and Bridget Sloan's sprained ankle.
Wang's collegiate high 9.925 on the floor exercise in this seasons Link to Pink meet is a testament to the work Wang has put in for the season.
With her “everything counts” mentality, her performances on vault and floor in the 2015 season has made her one of Florida's most consistent performers. She turned in a collegiate-best 9.90 on vault four times in 2015, including the last two meets. She's also posted 9.9 or better floor marks three times as a senior, including each of the last two competitions.
While she's focused on enjoying and relaxing with every meet, she's still focused on the end game: completing the puzzle.
With the conclusion of her senior season with the Gators, Wang sees it as the completion of one puzzle and the start of another.
Her time with the team is a separate puzzle from what she plans to take into her career, which focuses heavily on step-by-step logic.
“For season I let things happen,” Wang said. “Everything just fits together. I go with the flow of stuff, but I get very excited when things are a challenge. Everything has a reason or purpose. I guess that's why I like gym because everything has a reason or purpose.”
That engineer mindset can get in the way sometimes in the gym, so she sometimes lets the repetitions in practice take over during her performances.
“It's a problem for gym, though, because I get so analytical,” Wang said. “I have to turn my brain off and just go with it sometimes.”
At the start of her career outside of gymnastics, Wang plans to go into water resources – one of five civil engineering specialist activities – because it doesn't require a master's degree and she wants real world experience to understand where she belongs in the field. Once the 5 foot senior is ready, she hopes to head to grad school for a master's degree to further her career.
However, while it's Wang senior year in gymnastics, she still has another year in Gainesville as she is scheduled to graduate in May 2016.
“It's just taking me another year to finish,” Wang said. “There's nothing bad about that though.”
