Everyday Champion – D’Anna Piro

D’Anna Piro (Lake Oswego, Ore./Lake Oswego HS) is a sophomore on the Oregon State gymnastics team. D’Anna is a sophomore in her third season at Oregon State after using her redshirt season her first year in 2004-05. D’Anna used that year to her advantage taking tremendous steps to improve her conditioning and skills set to grab hold of the alternate position for the uneven bars lineup in 2006. A bars specialist, she performed in the lineup nine times and exhibitioned twice. She has continued to improve this year earning the lead-off spot on bars in OSU’s first meet of the season, last week. D’Anna maintains a 3.97 while double majoring in Exercise and Sport Science and Business in Oregon State’s Honors College. Monday morning, D’Anna took time to talk about her gymnastics carrer, her interests outside of the gym and her plans for the future.

Judging by your grades and the academic difficulty you choose to involve yourself in, talk about how important academics are to you.

“It has always been emphasized by my family and just by my drive. I’ve just always wanted to do really well. It is important to me because I enjoy learning, I enjoy going to class and learning more about my environment and everything there is to know.

How do you manage to earn such great grades and also be a part of such a difficult sport and part of such a great team?

“Time management. Really it is a lot of waking up and setting a plan for the day, but making sure that you’re allowing for other things in life, like a social life. It is just as important.”

With a double major of business and exercise science, it sounds like you have a big plan. What is the plan for after graduation?

“I’d like to get into athletic administration. Ideally I would enjoy being an assistant athletic director at a major university, hopefully in the Pac-10.”

So are you going to add an athletic administration minor too?

“You know, I’ve thought about it. But I think that the two majors and the honors degree is probably enough on my plate.”

Last year you made a dramatic improvement from your freshman year to your redshirt freshman season. What do you attribute that to?

“Hard work and a positive attitude. My freshman year, gymnastics was a little bit rough for me but I just kept up the hard work and tried to stay positive. With the support of my teammates and coaches and my old coaches too and my family, they helped me push through to become a better gymnast.”

What personal goals do you have for this season?

“Personally, I’d like to be a consistent contributor in the lineup and to be a lot more consistent than I was last year. But I really just want to do whatever I can to help this team get to the Super Six.”

I hear that you’re really involved with salsa dancing. Tell me about that.

“I belong to a group called Rumbanana. We practice once a week, or more if we’re getting ready for a competition, and we go for about four hours. This year we went to Miami for a competition in the fall, which was so much fun. Its really important to me to be involved in something other than gymnastics and school and dance has been a passion for me my whole life. If I didn’t do gymnastics I would probably be in dancing of some sort.

You said you competed. How good are you?

“Um, we’re pretty good. Miami was the first competition I’ve gone to and we placed fourth. But the first and second place teams were professional teams from Colombia. It was supposed to be an amateur competition.”