When Aja Sims was a junior Olympian, winning national championships and creating new uneven bars skills, she trained just an hour-and-a-half south of the University of Florida.
Her coaches, Brandy Johnson and Kelly Pitzen, were both former Olympians, teammates of Rhonda Faehn at the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. When Sims graduated high school in December 2014, Faehn, now with USA Gymnastics, was on the verge of building a gymnastics dynasty at the University of Florida, the Gators having just won the 2013 national championship and on the way to two more. For those two seasons, Sims was headed much further north, to Tuscaloosa.