Courage to Soar (with Bonus Content)

by Simone Biles

  The perfect teacher Mom had chosen turned out to be none other than my dad. He’d been researching online high school curriculums ever since the homeschool question first came up, and now he was ready. By then he’d retired from the FAA and was helping Mom run the financial side of the fourteen nursing homes she co-owned, so he simply adjusted his hours so that he could devote four of them to tutoring me in between my morning and afternoon workouts at the gym. Right from the start, it was a disaster. What teenager wants her father teaching her history and algebra? Dad thought I was a whiner and a procrastinator, which made him exasperated and annoyed. We ended up fussing at each other almost every single day.

  To make matters worse, the online curriculum Dad had chosen required students to do their classwork on a certain schedule—but I was always in gym practice at those times. Afterward, I’d come back to the computer and there’d be a million messages flashing on the screen: “Simone, where are you?” I was like, Isn’t this supposed to work with my schedule? What kind of flexibility is this? So then they would email my assignments, and I’d breeze through them, but somehow I wasn’t turning them in the right way. I didn’t know that until my first progress report arrived six weeks later.

  “This isn’t possible!” I burst out as I stared at the single sheet of paper with my name at the top. Underneath, for every subject except Spanish, I saw F, F, F, F, F.

  I was in shock, because up to then I’d always been a solid A or B student. As crushed as I was, my dad was in disbelief. “Simone, if you were struggling in all these subjects, why on earth didn’t you ask for help?” he said. He just kept looking at the report card and shaking his head.

  That’s when my mom decided that this perfect arrangement was not all that perfect. Mom “fired” my dad (I think he was actually relieved), and hired a new tutor named Miss Heather to take over. Miss Heather had previously been a high school teacher and now she worked at Bannon’s, homeschooling some of my teammates. She was tall and lanky with short brown hair and thin eyebrows, and she had a very patient style of teaching. I loved that her lesson plans were the same ones used for ninth grade in the public high school I would have attended. Miss Heather had all the books sent to me, and she made sure I was keeping pace with what all the public school kids in my grade were doing. Best of all, she’d been a math major in college. Since I wasn’t the best math student in the world, she helped me get up to speed.

  Miss Heather would come to Bannon’s three days a week for four hours each day; on the other two days, I was on my own. On those days, I’d go upstairs to the break room to work for three or four hours. I had to write papers and do projects just like the public school kids, but Miss Heather’s approach to testing was a little different. As long as I was understanding the lesson and moving along with the work, she’d test me at the end of each unit, rather than make me take all the chapter tests in between. She thought too many tests were a waste of valuable learning time—my kind of teacher.

  If you can’t already tell, I loved being tutored by Miss Heather. In her shy, soft-spoken way, she helped me feel confident about my studies, and by the next progress report, my grades had returned to normal. I stayed with Miss Heather for ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Later on, in twelfth grade, I worked with another great teacher my mom hired, Miss Susan. My mom, my dad, me, even Adria—we all exhaled. It seemed as if this homeschool thing was going to work out after all. Now if only I could transfer that great new attitude to my workout sessions in the gym.

  CHAPTER 12

  Redemption

  “The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.”

  —AMELIA EARHART, AUTHOR AND ADVENTURER

  Aimee was waiting for me over by the balance beam. I strolled to where she was and dropped my grip bag onto the mat. “What’s my next assignment?” I asked. I was late getting back from my mid-morning break, and we both knew it. But I was acting all casual, like it didn’t even matter.

  “Ten routines on beam,” Aimee said, adjusting a foam mat at one end of the padded, four-inch-wide plank of suede-covered wood.

  “Ten routines? That’s too many!” I protested.

  Aimee didn’t even look in my direction. She was clearly not happy with me. My bratty behavior had been on full display earlier that morning, when I’d resisted my conditioning workout every step of the way, muttering under my breath or talking back about why I didn’t think I needed to do extra stair runs. It was true that I had a slight cold and felt a little under the weather, but Aimee wasn’t cutting me any slack.

  “Simone, I’m not playing around,” she said now. “You have to make every connection in order for the routine to count.”

  “Fine!” I said, my displeasure clear in my tone.

  I straightened my back, lifted my chin, and held my hands above the beam, fingers together like dance hands. I took a deep breath, mounted the beam, and launched into my first routine. Toward the end, I paused a beat too long between two back handsprings that were supposed to flow smoothly together.

  “Doesn’t count,” Aimee said. “Start again.”

  All through beam practice, Aimee kept repeating that.

  “No, doesn’t count. You missed the connection. Start over.”

  I was getting aggravated because sometimes Aimee stopped me when I was sure I’d made the connection, and other times, she let a repetition go when it seemed to me that I’d been a little bit off. Finally, when I’d managed to put together seven routines that counted, I burst out, “Oh my gosh! How am I still on beam routines?”

  “Well, you’re making two out of three connections,” Aimee told me. “You need to make all three.”

  “Not fair,” I shot back. “The third one’s a bonus connection.”

  “You still have to connect it,” Aimee said, her voice firm. We both knew that most days she allowed the routine to count even when the bonus skill wasn’t flawlessly bridged, but not today. I was confused and frustrated; I hated hearing Aimee say no to me over and over, and I also had a runny nose.

  “I need to blow my nose,” I said.

  “Go,” Aimee said, waving me off. “But then you get back on that beam and finish your routines.”

  “But I already did seven,” I argued. That was highest number Aimee usually assigned. Most days, it was only five.

  “Do three more,” she said. “And connect those skills.”

  I felt so angry and powerless that I started crying and couldn’t seem to stop. So after every dismount from a routine, whether it counted or not, I’d go off to the bathroom to blow my nose. Meanwhile, Aimee was getting more and more mad.

  “Simone, if you don’t get back up on this beam in ten seconds, I’m going to add another routine!” she yelled while I was still in the bathroom. At this point, I was sobbing so loudly that everyone could hear me out in the gym. Then I just lost it.

  “I don’t care!” I screamed. “Go ahead and add it!”

  When I finally made it through the entire beam rotation, I mumbled just loud enough for Aimee to hear, “All those reps better count toward my beam workout later. And tomorrow too, because I already did eighteen routines today.”

  Aimee looked at me calmly and didn’t say anything. When I came back later for my afternoon workout, she said, “Okay, Simone, five beam routines.”

  “I already did them this morning!” I insisted with an attitude.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Aimee said pleasantly. “Give me five more.”

  That was one of the worst days Aimee and I ever had. And she didn’t even call my parents, as she sometimes did when I was being uncooperative. Oh, and let me tell you, I hated it when she called in my parents. It usually meant a lecture from my dad about me not appreciating my opportunities, and sometimes my mom would threaten to pull me out of gymnastics altogether.

  Everyone knew my dad at the gym. He would come early to pick up Adria and me so he could come inside to see what we were working on. But people hardly ever saw my mom. To tell the truth
, I don’t think she ever had much of a clue about my routines; she didn’t even know what the big skills were called. All she knew was what she saw me perform in competition. But she preferred it that way. She thought a little distance from my gymnastics allowed us both some necessary perspective. As she always told me, “I’m not your fan, Simone; I’m your mom.”

  Still, whenever she did show up at Bannon’s, everyone knew what that meant—something needed fixing, whether it was my attitude or something about the gym. The coaches would whisper to one another, “Look, Mrs. Biles is here.” They knew my mom owned her own company and was the boss everywhere she went. She might be a short little woman with a soft manner, but she held a lot of power and authority behind that sweetly smiling face. Plus, nothing could make me feel worse than knowing I’d disappointed Momma Biles. That’s why I was grateful whenever Aimee dealt with my brattiness herself and didn’t call my parents.

  I was now training more than thirty-five hours each week, with an intense focus on strength, conditioning, and connecting my skills to ensure that the whole routine looked effortless. I still loved the feeling of flying that I got from gymnastics—that hadn’t changed—but Aimee will tell you that for almost two years my attitude sucked. Maybe in the back of my mind, I was still mad about having to give up on public school; maybe my ADHD medication needed adjustment; or maybe my teenage hormones were just raging in a completely normal way. Whatever was going on with me, it didn’t help that my days were so long and my routine so regimented. Sometimes I simply didn’t want to have to go through hour after hour of somebody telling me what to do.

  Aimee recently described to a friend what my now famous “bratty period” looked like from her point of view: “Simone would be just kind of flinging her body around and not being committed to trying to be the best she could be,” she said. “When a child is doing that, it’s just about control. What she’s really saying is, I’m going to show you that I don’t have to do what you say. I know Simone’s family life is very disciplined. And so when she came to the gym, it was like her time to rebel, because she wasn’t going to act that way at home. At least once a week during that time, I would have either Ron or Nellie in the office, and I’d say, ‘Okay, I have to let you know what happened today.’ I have to say it was always effective in getting Simone back on track. What I recall is a lot of under-the-breath talking back and mumbling, but, really, she was never outwardly defiant. Besides, I work with adolescent and teenage girls every day. They’re all bratty. Simone’s brattiness, when she looks back on it now, was huge to her, but I’ve been coaching thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls for years. So I’m watching not just one girl act out, but a whole group of girls doing it at the same time. And I’m like, Go ahead, have your attitude, but do the work. Teenage girls don’t scare me.”

  I’m glad now that Aimee stuck by me, because I wouldn’t be where I am today without her. In the elite world, everyone loves my coach because they know how understanding she is. They know she thinks that even though gymnastics is hard work, it should also be enjoyable. Otherwise, why do it? Some coaches are like, “I don’t care if you’re hurting, go and do that skill.” And they think that if you’re having fun out on the floor, it means you’re not serious. Not Aimee. She carefully assesses every situation and keeps it real. Sometimes, like on the afternoon with the beam routines, she’ll push me hard. But other times, she’ll notice I’m exhausted and say, “Simone, it’s not working today. Go home. I think you could use some rest.”

  Even though my emotions were on a bit of a roller coaster, that didn’t mean I wasn’t intensely focused on my training. By the time the next competition season began in January 2012, I felt much stronger physically than I had the previous year, and my consistency was better. I’d once again set my sights on winning a spot on the women’s junior national team, and this time, I meant to succeed.

  Going into the American Classic in May, I’d already posted two all-around firsts in earlier meets, and one all-around third. Now I was once again on Martha’s home turf in Huntsville. I knew I’d have to prove myself in this meet, and I was relieved when I took first place all-around for my group—and first place on vault! I confess being vault champion meant almost more to me than winning the all-around. A year before, my coaches had been convinced that not doing the two-and-a-half twist had taken me out of the running for the national team. This time, with Martha and everyone looking on, I’d killed it on the Amanar.

  I’d done okay in my other events too, tying for second on floor, placing third on beam, and fourth on uneven bars. Best of all, my overall score qualified me to go straight through to the Visa National Championships at the end of the season, which put me in contention for a spot on the 2012 national women’s junior team.

  Just being in competition with other junior elite girls like Katelyn Ohashi and Lexie Priessman pushed me to raise my game. Once, I’d been hesitant to beat these girls because I was afraid they wouldn’t like me if I did. I now understood how wrong that thinking was. Every one of us had worked for years to earn our place in the arena. Competing my hardest in all my events was the highest form of respect I could show to them and to myself.

  Besides, as my mom always told me, “Don’t ever compete against someone else, Simone. You don’t go out there to beat another person. You go out there to do your very best. And if your very best means that you win that competition, that’s the way it should be. If your very best means that you come in third or fourth, that’s fine too. As long as you did your best. You don’t go out there grudgingly and think, Oh, I need to beat that person. No, no, no. You go out there and be the best Simone you can be. And whatever that outcome is, we’ll take it.”

  Being the best Simone I could be ended with me taking first place all-around at the US Secret Classic in Chicago, Illinois, in May, and third all-around at the Visa National Championships in St. Louis, Missouri, in June. At Nationals, I was also vault champion, after once again performing a strong Amanar. In fact, at every single meet I competed in for the entire 2012 season, I’d taken first place in vault with my Amanar. I’d been determined to never again be in a position of weakness when it came to the two-and-a-half, so my vault rankings felt like a comeback.

  That evening at Nationals, standing on the podium next to all-around gold medalist Lexie Priessman and silver medalist Madison Desch, I could hardly believe that my dream was coming true. Later, after the arena’s Jumbotron screen lit up with the names of the 2012 women’s junior national team, I was smiling so hard that the muscles in my face actually ached. Perhaps because the senior roster included fifteen girls, Martha had chosen only six juniors that year: Lexie Priessman, Madison Desch, Bailie Key, Katelyn Ohashi, Amelia Hundley, and me. All the other girls had been on the national team the previous year; I was the only newbie in the mix. As the six of us lined up in our red-white-and-blue tracksuits, beaming as photographers snapped our team portrait, all I could think was, Finally!

  CHAPTER 13

  Wheels Up

  “It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal . . .”

  —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER

  That could be you, Simone!” one of my teammates at Bannon’s called out. The American gymnasts, famously nicknamed the Fierce Five, had just won artistic team gold at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, ahead of the gymnastics powerhouse nations of Russia, Romania, and China. It was only the second time in Olympic history that our country’s women gymnasts had finished in first place; the first had been in 1996 when Kerri Strug of the Magnificent Seven famously executed the final vault with an injured ankle. Now, for the past several days, we’d watched another thrilling victory unfold on a giant screen set up in the gym at Bannon’s, where I’d gathered with my teammates and coaches to cheer on Team USA.

  We’d all held our breath as Gabrielle Douglas took the all-around gold; as Aly Raisman won first on floor; and as McKayla Maroney came away with silver on va
ult. Earlier, we’d huddled together to see those three, along with Kyla Ross and Jordyn Wieber, climb onto the podium for the team gold medal ceremony. “The Star Spangled Banner” blared from speakers as the American flag rose on a wire over the magenta-colored arena floor. I had chills. I was imagining what it must feel like to stand on that podium with your teammates, knowing you’d pulled off the big win. The biggest win.

  That’s when one of the girls I trained with called out, “That could be you, Simone!” Her words went through me like an electric current. Immediately, several other girls took up the chant: “2016 Olympics, Simone! You can do it! That will be you!”

  I’d just achieved my goal of making the junior national team, and to be honest, I hadn’t thought much beyond that yet. I’ve never liked to look too far down the road. I try to stay focused on the next event, and then the next, to keep from overthinking things and becoming overwhelmed. So I didn’t say anything as my teammates excitedly picked me for the next Games, which would be held in Rio four years later. I just laughed along nervously and rubbed my hands over the goose bumps on my arms. Wow, I went to training camp with Kyla and Jordyn, and now they’re winning Olympic gold, I thought. Maybe I can do that myself one day. In that moment, I quietly asked God to please help me do everything I could to be part of the 2016 Olympics team.

  At Nationals Camp the following January, word spread quickly that Kyla Ross and Elizabeth Price would withdraw from the American Cup in March. Both had suffered injuries and needed time to recover. Who would Martha send to replace them?

  I’d worked hard at camp that week. I was now more used to the repetitive drills at the ranch, although I was still kind of starstruck by all the big names training next to me. I was starting to develop friendships with some of them, especially with Katelyn Ohashi, a pixie-cute girl who always stood next to me when we lined up for Martha in height order; we were the two shortest girls there.