- March 28, 2025
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No matter if it is at the professional or amateur level, there’s a crossroads-type moment in every athlete’s development when they encounter a difficult challenge.
Sometimes, that roadblock comes as a matter of luck and your team, by the luck of the draw, gets selected to face off against that specific opponent that pushes you to another level. Sometimes, facing this adversity is self-inflicted, an athlete knows the only way forward is through the wall, so why run from it? And sometimes, that moment is strategically placed in front of an athlete by their coach as a trigger for a type of growth an athlete otherwise wouldn’t have experienced. That was the experience 11-year-old Jocelyn James had after just one season of competitive gymnastics.
“When she started in the compulsory levels, she spent almost no time in Level 3,” Jocelyn’s father, Scott James, said. “She was pretty advanced from the beginning, so her coaches moved her to Level 4 right away. She did really well in her first season at that level, and before the summer of 2023, they were training her with the goal of moving her from the compulsory levels into what is called the optionals levels — specifically into Level 6. As she was training that summer, preparing for her first optionals competition, she had a fantastic training period. It was just so much fun to watch from my perspective, I was just like, awestruck at all the time watching her do some amazing things. Because of how great she performed in training, a few days before that very first optionals meet, she was actually moved to Level 7.”
This moment, one way or another would leave an indelible mark on the Horizon West pre-teen’s gymnastics journey.
“When I went to my first optionals competition, (about) a week before the meet, I moved up a level (higher than I expected),” Jocelyn said. “It showed me how good I was (doing) … and it helped me gain confidence; I felt ahead.”
Knowing his youngest of four and only daughter was “built different,” it was no surprise to Scott James when she won the gold in the floor and bars competitions, silver in the beam and bronze in the vault and took home the all-around gold at the 2023 Orlando Holiday Classic — her first Level 7 competition.
However, a couple of months later, Jocelyn’s performance in her fifth optionals competition — the 2024 Charleston Cup — made her dad speechless.
“The Charleston Cup was really an eye-opening experience for me,” Scott James said. “I remember just being speechless; all I could really say was, ‘Wow.’ Out of 150 or something gymnasts, she was the only one to qualify for all four event finals … which she didn’t end up competing in all four because her coach did not want her to get hurt at that point of the season with states and regionals coming up. But you could just tell at that competition she was different than the other girls. You could just tell.”
Jocelyn claimed gold in the all-around competition at that event before going on to finish second in the all-around at both the Florida Level 7 championship meet and Region 8 championship meet in 2024.
Once again, the start of a new gymnastics season for the now-third-year gymnast meant a step up in competition into Level 8 during the 2024-25 season. However, it seems the increased difficulty and bigger stage have not impacted how Jocelyn has performed.
In 20 events — all four of the floor, vault, beam and bars events across five different competitions — she has finished top three 14 times, top two 11 times and won gold on seven occasions, never finishing lower than third in the all-around this season.
As the biggest competitions of the season approach over the course of the next couple of months, the biggest part of 2025 for Jocelyn will occur this summer as she will begin her preparations for the biggest leap in competitive level.
“Jocelyn has to go through something that’s called Hopes, which is the first step in stepping into reaching Junior Elites,” Scott James said. “Right now, she’s on track to compete in the 11-12 division of Hopes after her training over the summer. We won’t know exactly what she’s going to do until after that when the coaches assess where she’s at. But to me, to even be at this point in her journey after not even three full seasons of competing in the sport is the most amazing thing. That really gives you an idea of the type of work she’s putting into her. She trains five days a week, for five to six hours a day. She’s built different. People will ask me how she’s able to do any of this, and that’s where I always land; the girl is just built differently. She does not let anything really bother her. She’s coachable, she listens and she doesn’t want to stop putting in the time. She’s not your normal 11-year-old girl.”
When you consider how she responded when asked about the biggest life lesson she has learned from gymnastics, her father’s assertion about Jocelyn not being an average pre-teen girl gains even more legitimacy.
“My goal is to train as hard as I can and go to the Olympics,” she said. “(Because of that, I’ve learned) you’re not always going to get something you want right away; you have to work hard for most stuff in life.”
And as Jocelyn pursues her dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast, Scott James is doing everything he can to help his daughter in that journey. But before fulfilling his gymnastics dad duty, he’s making sure to enjoy being a dad first.
“It’s priceless,” he said. “I have four kids, and Jocelyn’s the baby and the only girl, so it’s just priceless because girls are different than the boys … so it’s just fun as a dad to watch your daughter grow into becoming herself. You watch her be a kid for this chunk of her life and then she starts growing up and you get to see her grow in something that she really enjoys doing. It’s priceless; I just catch myself smiling all the time watching her.”
