UCLA student masters balance beams, bar graphs and bedazzlers

UCLA's world-class athletes typically come to campus with a laser focus on their sport.

Powerhouse gymnast Madisyn Anyimi - "Maddie" to friends and fans alike - arrived fully focused on her education.

"One of the big things that made me want to come to UCLA was the standout academics. I'm an applied math major and I really liked the math department here," she said. "What really sold me was the chance to get a great education and find a lot of community."

Anyimi, who graduates this June, seriously considered quitting gymnastics before college, and committed to UCLA without a guaranteed spot on the team. So when she got a surprise call from UCLA gymnastics head coach Janelle McDonald and the two began a series of conversations, the Sacramento native slowly began to reconsider.

"I was honestly planning on not continuing gymnastics in college," she said. "I started when I was around 3 because I had too much energy and was doing flips off all the furniture. And when I started training, I never really looked back."

Today, Anyimi laughs as she looks back at how her Bruin journey began from a place of uncertainty. Closer to the first day of school, she changed her mind and got a last-minute spot on the team - and now she couldn't imagine her life any other way.

"Being on this team has been so amazing. My teammates mean the world to me; they make me feel safe and we have so much fun," she said. "After commencement, I know they'll all be just a phone call or text away, but I'm going to miss being a daily part of this tight-knit group of supportive people working toward the same goal."

Saluted for her "senior year glow-up" by her teammates, Anyimi capped off her impressive four-year, 20-hour-a-week Bruin gymnastics career with career-best scores on the vault, bars and floor. Outside of the gym, she also hit her stride in the classroom, enjoying how so many of the other classes she took, like physics and chemistry, dovetailed with her major.

"Having a good foundation in math is really useful, because it's literally in everything," she said. "One of the most fun classes I ever took was a math modeling class, where we saw how it was used to model anything from the spread of disease to election results. I like how math opens so many doors."

Analyzing sports - and bedazzling

After she graduates, Anyimi hopes to use her mathematical talents to start a career in sports analytics. Interested in both the collegiate and professional level, she's been gearing up for this transition by building up her coding, statistics and data science expertise.

And when she has the rare opportunity for some free time - getting more of that will be a big change in her rigorous schedule - Anyimi has found a rewarding outlet for her creativity and focus.

"Recently, I've taken up the hobby of bedazzling various things in my house," she said, laughing. "I bedazzled gifts for my teammates, I bedazzled a baseball jersey, I bedazzled a cup that I like to keep flowers in. Nothing near me is safe that I think would look pretty with rhinestones."

That idea - bringing a unique sparkle to everything around her - sums up part of what makes Anyimi so special as a remarkable athlete, student and all-around Bruin. And although she's officially retiring from gymnastics for real this time, she's proud that she stuck with it and gained so much in addition to discipline and drive.

"Gymnastics is a very good teacher. It teaches you how to have thicker skin, how to be very detail-oriented. Balancing it with school for so long, it gave me time-management strategies," Anyimi said. "And at UCLA, I really learned the value of what it means to be on a team: how to work together and support each other. I felt that as an athlete and as a student."