Red Rocks gymnasts Camie Winger found herself, and it's led to a more fulfilled season


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KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Camie Winger, a Red Rocks gymnast, gained confidence through self-reflection and balance.
  • Coach Carly Dockendorf encouraged Winger to find identity beyond gymnastics, fostering personal growth.
  • Winger's involvement in diverse groups improved her performance and overall fulfillment in gymnastics.

SALT LAKE CITY — Camie Winger has done a lot of reflecting over the last year.

As a second-year gymnast for the Red Rocks, the Orem native is feeling more confident in her gymnastics and in her ability to be at her best with a team that has placed high expectations upon itself for the season.

That confidence has been evident in her routines each week, and the higher scores have followed suit.

But the process to get to where she is now was anything but easy, and she said it's still something she's continuing to work on as she develops with the Red Rocks in her second season.

For Winger, the freshman season — one that already experienced a tumultuous start by losing a head coach weeks before the season began — was much more challenging that she originally expected.

In some ways, Winger felt like she lost herself as she somewhat isolated herself from the rest of the world to help her navigate the pressures of being out on her own for the first time in her life. She wanted to convey this to her mother, but that would only make her more homesick.

"I didn't know who to rely on or what, because I felt like I was still trying to be so close to home, like I wanted to go home all the time," Winger said. "But I also knew I needed to build that independence, and so I was trying to balance all that. I didn't really know who to go to, because I was like, 'Well, if I talk to my mom so much, I'm just gonna want to go home more and all this stuff.'"

So instead, she doubled down on gymnastics and made that largely the only focus in her life. But even through all the hard work to silence everything else, she felt like as a freshman all she could do was "follow."

"I learned that I'm not very good in that role," she said.

Midway through her freshman season, head coach Carly Dockendorf sat her down and "was like we need to fix something, because you're missing something; you're too focused on gymnastics."

For Dockendorf, gymnastics is just a part of what identifies a person; it's a temporary aspect to their life that will eventually fade, regardless of the accolades or talent. She wants her gymnasts to be well-rounded and have an identity outside of the all-consuming sport.

"I do think that just being an athlete, you can get so caught up in your results and your sport; and when it's not going well, you feel like you're not succeeding as a person, and when you feel like that, you can't go out and perform your best," Dockendorf said. "And so just continuously having the conversations of this is really what you do, this is not who you are.

"Because when it gets stripped away from you, there has to be something left," she added. "There has to be more than just flips and tricks. And sometimes, in our small world, it feels like all that matters is flips and tricks. ... Each one of them are bringing so much more to not just our team but to the community around them. And that, really, at the end of the day, is what's going to matter. That's what people are going to remember you for, not just some skill that you did or some routine that you did. It's about how you impacted your teammates, how you impacted this university and the community. That's what people will say about you."

Winger, like many others, was simply too focused on gymnastics, even though that was never who she was before enrolling at Utah.

"My whole life, I never was that way," Winger said. "Like, I like to hang out with my school friends, and I like to hang out with my gym friends, and I had my family, and I just had so many other things. Whereas here, I was like, 'Well, I have gymnastics.' I'm doing most of my school online, like, I don't know."

Dockendorf encouraged Winger to involve herself in other groups that weren't solely involved in the gymnastics community. And as such, Winger started to involve herself in different groups and people.

One such group was at the Institute of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Winger said she grew up as a member of the church, but her family stopped going when she was about 12 years old.

"One of the volleyball players, she was like, 'Hey, you should come to church with me.' And I think that really changed things a lot, just having another group outside of gymnastics.

"I don't know, it just gave me a little bit more sense of belonging," she added. "I feel like it's really what it boils down to it."

Utah Red Rocks’ Camie Winger scores a 9.950 on the beam during a gymnastics meet against Utah State University at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025. The University of Utah won.
Utah Red Rocks’ Camie Winger scores a 9.950 on the beam during a gymnastics meet against Utah State University at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025. The University of Utah won. (Photo: Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)

It was enough to help her realize that she no longer needed to be a follower in gymnastics, but that she could lead out with confidence and be one of the best gymnasts on the floor on any given night.

"After the season last year, I was like, 'Yeah, that didn't quite go how I wanted it to,'" she said. "It definitely was a process of relearning and, like, retraining my brain to make the decision every day to make it the best day I possibly can."

And that means having that attitude even when she doesn't feel at her best. Recently, she said she came into practice she wasn't "feeling it," but assistant coach Jimmy Pratt said she looked "so sharp and ready today."

"I was like, well, that's crazy, because this morning I was not feeling it," she said. "It would have been really easy to come in here and just give half effort. But an hour before practice, I was like, 'No, you have the choice to do your best.'"

All of that has helped Winger have a more well-rounded approach to the sport she loves, while also taking charge in her day-to-day affairs without being a passive participant.

And it's allowed her to exude more confidence as a gymnast who continues to show improvement on a meet-to-meet basis.

"I feel like she comes into practice much more intentional every day," Dockendorf said. "Freshman year is hard. I don't care who you are, like freshman year is — it's just your whole world gets flipped upside down, and it takes a while to adjust. And then balancing competing at the highest level, there's just so much going into it.

"I think this year, she's much more settled in — her sophomore year — and so she comes in, and she's much more intentional in her practice, and that confidence builds and allows her to go out and be much more consistent at the meets, and also has created a greater belief in herself and what she's able to do."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Josh is the sports director at KSL.com and beat writer covering University of Utah athletics — primarily football, men’s and women's basketball and gymnastics. He is also an Associated Press Top 25 voter for college football.
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