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PROVO - Aimee Walker Pond took one of those deep sighs gymnasts take before they have to perform air acrobatics.
But Pond wasn't preparing for her routine on the bars. Instead, all she had to do was answer a question:
"As a gymnast, what's your biggest challenge?"
The answer was not that she is blind in her right eye. Nor was it that she is deaf.
The answer? "Injuries"
Yeah, injuries are what she has had to deal with most in recent years. She has had surgeries on both knees, and a broken right ankle last year kept her away from the sport in which she was once told she couldn't participate because she was deaf.
"It's a blessing to be able to compete again," Pond said through one of her interpreters, teammate Dayna Smart.
Pond is 23 now, and the junior will have another blessing in tonight's triangular meet with No. 14 Arizona and Southern Utah at the Marriott Center. She is back in the bars lineup after being scratched a week ago in the Cougars' meet with Denver.
There are subtle differences in the way Pond and her teammates experience a meet - Pond sometimes relies on teammates to keep her updated on how the match is progressing - but, to Pond, that's no big deal.
"That's all she knows," Smart said bluntly.
Since the day Patsy Walker called to enroll her 7-year-old daughter in the gymnastics program at Los Angeles Valley College and was told that the school would not be able to accommodate a deaf girl, Pond has wanted to be like any other gymnast. It's an attitude she maintained at UCLA and brought with her to BYU, transferring because the school offered a better hearing-impaired program.
"Every situation she's been in is usually filled with many challenges," Patsy said. "Every time, she handled it with a renewed strength of character, of enthusiasm."
Pond is believed to be the only deaf gymnast with her level of experience, which includes competing in the Olympic Trials in 2000 - the same year she placed second in the all-around competition at the International Elite in San Diego.
When her tumbling days are over, she'd like to coach fellow deaf gymnasts.
Arizona State at No. 5 Utah
Tonight, 7 p.m.
No. 14 Arizona, SUU at BYU
Tonight at Marriott Center, 7 p.m.