By Caroline Lanni
Stephen Nedoroscik was four and a half years old when he started his gymnastics career.
Nedorscik said he was a very energetic child according to his mother and after getting put into some gymnastics classes as a kid he joined the gym.
“I was there [at the Sterling Gym] my entire childhood,” said Nedoroscik and all throughout high school until leaving for college.
Nedoroscik is from Worcester Massachusetts and graduated from high school in 2016 from Worcester Technical.
He attended Penn State and graduated from there in 2020. He majored in electrical engineering and joined their gymnastics team and stayed on the team all four years.
Nedoroscik chose to attend Penn State for college and to continue his gymnastics career there because his coach from Sterling Gym, Bob Donahue, recommended that it would be a good fit for him since the school has so much history in gymnastics.
Nedoroscik said he made the National Team while he was in college. There are two competitions that allow you to be on the National Team and those are: Winter Cup and USA Nationals.
At the one competition, The Winter Cup, since Nedoroscik won NCAAs beforehand he was qualified to compete in this competition in 2019 and he ended up winning pommel horse at this competition and then joining the USA National Team.
“I was the only specialist in the last 30 years to be on the National Team, so I was extremely honored,” he added.
Nedoroscik described the hardships he went through during his journey onto the Worlds team and the Worlds Championship.
“Worlds itself was crazy,” Nedoroscik said. He was not sure if he was going to make it to Worlds because he got diagnosed with a vocal cord dysfunction and had to get help right beforehand.
He added that he couldn’t do any routines during that time before the qualifiers for Worlds and luckily ended up still doing well during the qualifiers and made it onto the Worlds team.
When Nedoroscik was finally ready to leave for World Championships he ended up getting really sick [again] and was ill for eight days.
He added that due to that sickness he got to Japan five days late, missed training days, and didn’t train before the competition.
Nedoroscik said since he was sick with non-COVID-19 symptoms right before Worlds, he had to take many COVID-19 tests to make it into the country.
“There were a lot of hardships going into this competition and I kind of just fought through everything and, you know, telling myself, ‘I need to get through this, and this is a dream come true competing at World Championships,’” said Nedoroscik.
After all that Nedoroscik dealt with, he ended up winning Gold on pommel horse at Worlds in 2021.
“When I did end up winning it was pretty unbelievable, almost like I was just in shock,” he added.
He said that it really was “without a doubt the best moment in my life.”
Nedoroscik is also the first United States gymnast in history to win Gold on pommel horse at World Championships.
The boys program directors and Nedoroscik’s coaches, Bob Donahue, and his wife Liz Gonzalez, are a husband – wife coaching team at Sterling Gym and both coached Nedoroscik right from the time he started his competitive gymnastics career at Sterling.
Donahue and Gonzalez have been coaching at Sterling for about 14 years and have been at the Sterling Gym since 1993, said Donahue.
They both added, early on in coaching Nedoroscik he showed a real interest in pommel horse and later in his teen years they started seeing his talents and potential of where he was going.
“We both are incredibly thrilled to the level of success he has reached, and we feel lucky that we could have a person get to that point. We certainly helped since we are the coaches, but he is the one who did it,” said Donahue.
Gonzalez said, “When he was younger, he was hard to work with and we were throwing him out of the gym all the time, but you could see his potential, and finally seeing him mature and get to that point where he really went after this, it was just like wow this is very exciting, and he has really proved himself to be a world champion.”
Nedoroscik said that he is happy and proud to be a world champion for himself, and his family is very proud of him and all he has accomplished as well.
Nedoroscik added that he is, “extremely grateful for them” [The Sterling Gym].
“I couldn’t have gone anywhere without Sterling [Gym,] – I would not have made it to NCAA gymnastics. Bob Donahue is just an honorable coach and an absolutely great guy as well and he is the reason why I made it to Penn State and he was a huge part of my gymnastics life – the majority of all my gymnastics I learned from Bob and Liz,” he said.
General Manager of the Sterling Gym, Matthew Carbone said that “Stephen’s accomplishments in gymnastics are truly monumental, but the best part is seeing the younger gymnasts looking up to him. When he visited last month, the kids all wanted to get their photo taken with Stephen, and to watch him train up close. We are all really proud of him and are grateful for him providing a much-needed boost for gymnastics in general. He is continuing to train, and we can’t wait to see his next competition!”
Right now, Nedoroscik is still at Penn State as a gymnast, training, and being the volunteer assistant coach to help out the team.
“Mostly I am here [ at Penn State] to train and keep my gymnastics career going,” he said.
There are two more World Championships before the next Olympics, and he said that he would love to go again for the team events and is very hopeful for those opportunities.
He hopes to achieve his goal to make the Olympics team in 2024, Nedoroscik added.
Nedoroscik advice for the younger gymnastics’ generation is, “as someone who was not recruited into the NCAA – anyone can do what I have done,” by keeping your offense up and working really hard, and aiming high for your goals, he said.
“If someone has the determination and can train well, they can do what I have done,” Nedoroscik added.