Mizzou gymnast’s uncommon work ethic leads to break-through season

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

It won't take long for sophomore Ayla Acevedo's floor routine to grab your eye.

Within the first eight seconds of her routine, Acevedo is flying through the air. So much so, you may have to look up.

"Sky high," sophomore gymnast Olivia Kelly said, when asked for one thing to describe Acevedo's first tumbling pass.

"Humongous," sophomore gymnast Kaia Tanskanen said, when asked the same question. "I'm looking up at the sky to see her. It's just like crazy." 

Over the course of the 2026 season, Acevedo has grown into a fixture of Mizzou's floor rotation, which is ranked No. 5 in the nation, according to the Road To Nationals rankings. However, her success didn't happen overnight.

In fact, the rising Tiger star knows that the good things in life don't always come to us easy. No, Acevedo has had to earn everything she has, including her spot on the Tiger roster.

"My junior year when like its prime recruiting time, I wasn't really getting like that many calls... it was kind of hard," Acevedo said. "So, I just worked really hard junior year to like up my skills and be consistent during meets." 

She worked so hard that she ended up earning two scholarship offers from both Pittsburgh and Ball State, giving herself a chance to compete at the collegiate level. But Acevedo didn't take the easy road, she had a dream in mind and she chased it.

While she was still in high school, Mizzou gymnastics offered her an opportunity to walk on to the team. The Virginia native said the culture and genuine atmosphere that head coach Shannon Welker spoke to her during her visit, so she made the decision to come to Columbia without a scholarship.

Acevedo joined the Tigers in the midst of the most successful run in program history: the 2025 campaign. During that season, Coach Welker's roster featured eight All-Americans, including one national champion. So, needless to say, competition time was at a premium.

"That was a young lady that spent--didn't get very--I don't know if she got any competition time last year in the line up and really, I think it didn't sit well with her and she took it to heart," Welker said.

Instead of taking it personally, Acevedo got to work and her roommates, Kelly and Tanskanen, saw her uncommon work ethic first-hand.

After not breaking into the a lineup as a freshman, the now sophomore spent time working on her own over the course of the summer, attending voluntary morning practices, conditioning sessions and beyond.

"She didn't get defeated by it and that she got like driven by it instead," Kelly said.

"She's been working her butt off day in, day out of the gym every single day," Tanskanen said.

After getting competition-ready, the MU coaching staff gave Acevedo a new floor routine about a month before the 2026 season began.

"[Assistant coach] Jackie [Terpak] does a really good job with the choreography," Acevedo said. "She took my idea because I love Katseye, which is my floor music, so she took my idea and really put it together amazingly." 

She made her collegiate debut with that routine against Iowa State in the first meet of the season, immediately seeing the fruits of all her labor. Acevedo scored a 9.900 on her high-flying floor performance, even matching that score against Oklahoma just 12 days later.

The sophomore stayed in the floor lineup for Mizzou's highly-anticipated meet against then-No. 2 Florida and played a crucial role in the Tigers' big upset over the Gators, setting a new career-high with a 9.925.

"You can see her confidence like building each week and like her personality has to shine," Kelly said.

However, there's a lot more to Acevedo than just gymnastics. The Virginia native is also balancing being a high-level athlete, with an incredibly difficult major: biochemistry.

"I don't even know where to begin. I'm in awe every day that she can do that," Tanskanen said.

Acevedo has big dreams both inside and out of the gym.

"I want to be a forensic scientist, but like when they get the data from the crime scene and they go in the lab and figure out whose DNA is what," she said.

As the old saying goes, sometimes the joy is not just found in the destination, but the journey that you take to get to it. Acevedo said she can relish the fact that all her hard work has led her here. Meanwhile, her roommates said there is a whole lot that young gymnasts and even gymnasts on the Tiger roster can learn from their friend, Ayla.

"If you set your mind to something that you can really accomplish it," Tanskanen said.

"I think that really inspires kids in like ways that people don't really think about," Kelly said.

Acevedo will look to help No. 7 Mizzou gymnastics finish out the regular-season strong, before hoping to make a run back to the NCAA Championships this postseason.