Junior gymnast Marissa Gutierrez has been a standout for the Alabama gymnastics team. Along with being a top athlete, Gutierrez earned placement on the SEC Academic Honor Roll for two years. During our talk, she spoke about why she chose Alabama, and what it’s like to compete for Sarah Patterson.

Crimson White: How long have you been doing gymnastics?

Marissa Gutierrez: I started when I was four and a half years old, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I started out at a local gym just down the street from my house. I did all my compulsory level gymnastics levels 4-6. Then I switched gyms to the Clear Lake Area.

In fact, Robert Ladanyi, the assistant at the University of Florida, was my coach for four years. Then my junior year in high school, I started driving all the way to the Woodlands, which is about an hour away, to train with the Texans and trained with them. That’s where I graduated.

CW: What made you choose Alabama?

MG: I was leaning towards LSU just because it was close, but I visited there and it just didn’t feel right. It was really questionable, and I kept giving hints to my parents that this wasn’t a good choice. And I had already been to Florida’s campus for camps because I was visiting my old coach. And so my dad told me, “You know, you should at least go to just one more school. Just to say you didn’t have any regrets.” And then I came here and the minute I got here I was like, “yeah I’m coming here.” Just the campus and the atmosphere, just everything they had to offer was so much more than any other school.

CW: What’s it like competing for Coach Patterson?

MG: Everything that she has to offer is more than what we do on the gymnastics floor. She helps us so much in the gym, but she also makes us strong women. She helps us in the future with our majors and anything she can do to help us after our career here. She’s much more than just a coach.

CW: Coach Patterson said you had the best meet of your career against Auburn, which you followed up by posting career-highs on all three of your events against Florida. What has this season been like for you?

MG: Going into the season, it was a little rough. Over Christmas break I was having issues on beam with consistency, and it definitely hurt my ego a little bit to be pulled out so fast of the lineup. But it definitely put a reality check that our team is so good, and we do have so much depth that if I’m not being the best I can be, then it is what it is. You have to suck it up and get over it. I think it pushed me further to continue to do better and try harder and be more consistent. And when I get put in a spot where, going up after two falls, that I have the mental capability and confidence to go up and hit a routine that, if I didn’t, probably would have cost us the meet.

CW: You’ve made the SEC Academic Honor Roll the past two years. How important is the other side of being at Alabama for you?

MG: It’s a very important thing to me. Throughout high school, I didn’t take honors classes, didn’t do anything to go above and beyond. So coming here, it was definitely a little bit of a struggle my freshman year, taking the math courses and having to do so much work just for one math class and then trying to balance out other classes.

But once I got an All-American award for vault, it’s been my goal to be a Scholastic All-American again – to have a 3.5, and I got a 3.6 this last semester. So academics are definitely a huge part.

CW: Your major is early childhood development. What do you want to do with that?

MG: I’ve always wanted to teach. I’ve always had some teacher-like qualities. I had a class where I had to mentor at a middle school last year, and the director came up to me and said, “Are you going to be a teacher?” And I was like, “Well sort of, kind of.” And he said, “You just have that look about you.” So all my classes this year, I’m doing lab hours at the child development center. I’m leaning to try to do an internship with RISE next year, my senior year, and if all goes well, hopefully transfer that to the RISE center in Houston which is not that far from my house.