Skip to content
Sports

Rutgers' Michelle Amoresano excels on, off mat

 – Photo by Mica Finehart

Training for one event in collegiate gymnastics takes hours of perfection. Training for all four events is another challenge in itself. For senior captain Michelle Amoresano on the Rutgers gymnastics team, competing in the all-around has become routine for her.

Hailing from Whippany, New Jersey, Amoresano came to the Banks with a lot of experience under her belt as a four-time Junior Olympics Nationals qualifier and New Jersey’s uneven bars champion in 2014. 

Throughout her high school gymnastics career, she’s been able to excel in the all-around, placing as high as second in Jersey’s all-around competition in 2012 and 2013.

Since joining the Scarlet Knights, Amoresano has competed in a whopping total of 36 meets before this season with her all-around performances coming from her sophomore year. That didn’t just come from talent, but from hard work. 

Voted among Rutgers, Amoresano was awarded the Hardest Worker Award in her freshman and junior year. Last season, she was also the recipient of the Chrystal Chollet-Norton Award for hard work, a positive attitude, perseverance and a commitment to the Knights' gymnastics team.

With only a couple weeks left in the season, Amoresano wants to leave all her cards out on the table.

“I want to leave off on a high note,” she said. “There's been a lot of changes this season and I think they're benefiting the team and myself.”

As a sophomore, Amoresano’s career-high all-around score was a 38.800 done at Ohio State on Feb. 4, 2017. She wasn’t able to touch that score until two years later, with the addition of first-season head coach Umme Salim-Beasley and two new assistant coaches. Amoresano ran away with a new high of 39.050 to contribute major points for the win over then No. 25 Penn State.

Amoresano has competed all-around in almost every competition this season and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change any time soon. The key to her consistency in competition has been not just due to hard work in practice, but recovering afterward as well.

“Just taking care of my body, that's a really big thing,” Amoresano said on her consistency in all-around. “Making sure I'm eating right, staying hydrated, going into treatment as much as I can. Competing in all-around is a really big goal for me this season, so knowing that the coaches believe in me and my teammates believe in me, it helps me build confidence."

As good as she is in all-around competitions, Amoresano also finds time to be an all-around person in different aspects of her life. In her sophomore year, she was named a Rutgers Student Athlete Achiever and became a member of the Rutgers Student Athletic Advisory Committee (SAAC), which takes only a few student athlete representatives from each team.

A journalism and media studies major, Amoresano hopes to become a sports reporter after she graduates in May, but still manages to balance her school aspirations with her gymnastic goals, too.

When asked what advice she would give to her teammates, who are new to the Rutgers squad, Amoresano understands the balancing act of being a great all-arounder in gymnastics, academics and her personal life.

“I know sometimes everything is all about gymnastics, but school is a big part of your career too,” Amoresano said. “Have goals set for each part of your life. Your personal life and your gymnastics life and your school work. I think if you focus on all three of those, then it will make you an all-around person and in gymnastics as well.”

There are just four meets left until the Big Ten Championships, hosted by Penn State, on March 23. Amoresano and the rest of her fellow seniors are excited about the future, but remain focused on continuing to improve in their routines. 

She said she is squeezing every last ounce of what she has left in the tank, knowing that when it’s all over, she did everything that she could’ve done right until the end.

“I want to keep improving each week and set season highs and career highs that I can reach,” Amoresano said. “Just ending on a really high note, so that I can go into my future just knowing that I did as much as I can in my college career and ending gymnastics in a positive way.”


For updates on the Rutgers gymnastics team, follow @TargumSports on Twitter.



Related Articles


Join our newsletterSubscribe