Female athlete of the week

Name: Andrea Arlotta Sport: Gymnastics Class: Senior Age: 22 Major: English writing

The… Name: Andrea Arlotta Sport: Gymnastics Class: Senior Age: 22 Major: English writing

The beginning of Andrea Arlotta’s gymnastics career began in the typical venue – her living room.

The daughter of a gymnastics coach of 25 years, Arlotta spent many an afternoon flipping off her couch, trying to stick the landing. Naturally, her career moved to the next stage when she began classes at a local gym with her sister.

While the process seemed typical, her initial progress resembled anything but that of the eventual career point-leader for Pitt gymnastics.

“I wasn’t very good,” she said of her early classes in Milwaukee, where she was born. “I was more interested in just running around. The instructors actually told my mom it might be best for me not to take the class. I just wasn’t that interested.”

Stops in Orlando and Cincinnati, though, would change both her perception of the sport and her eventual career path.

After about eight years in Milwaukee, she moved to the Sunshine State until she was about 16, winning three all-around state titles and 18 individual crowns in high school. From there, she moved to Ohio to train at the Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy for two years before coming to Pitt.

“Most of my coaches didn’t seem to think I had any potential as a gymnast until Orlando,” she recalled. “I think it was there I really developed and started to realize my potential.”

Pitt should be thankful somebody unlocked Arlotta’s talents. At last week’s East Atlantic Gymnastic League Championships, she not only garnered her 10th first-team selection, she also surpassed Robyn Senior for the school’s all-time individual point lead, bumping her career total to 1,526.450. With that also came a career-best 9.900 on the uneven bars, good enough to capture the title at the event.

A co-captain and unquestioned leader for the squad, Arlotta has a chance to advance to her first-ever NCAA Tournament with a solid showing at Regionals next weekend. While the closing of her gymnastics career is still up in the air, so to speak, the senior does know what her immediate plans are after graduation.

“I’ll actually be getting my degree in August after I do Pitt in Italy for the summer,” Arlotta said, later referencing her minor in Italian. “I have family over there that I haven’t even met. They sent me an e-mail a little while ago and although it had some broken English in it, I understood it so I am pretty excited.”