COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Ohio State University junior gymnast Jesse Pakele stood off to the side of the floor exercise at the Big Ten event finals in Ann Arbor. He chalked up his hands, went through his pre-routine and took a deep breath.
“I raised my hand and I just knew that whatever happened, I put it in the most I could have,” he said. “And the outcome is what it was.”
It was an outcome that Jesse Pakele had been working towards this entire season; and really, he’d been working towards much longer than that.
“I was already thrown into the gym realm and all that, and I knew that, I mean, maybe it was my destiny to keep going with this,” he said with a smile and a shrug.
From about the time he could walk, Jesse Pakele was flipping around his hometown near Honolulu, Hawaii.
“I was a gymnast,” Jesse’s mother Erin Pakele said. “He was definitely going to be a gymnast.”
“Our kids had no choice,” Jesse’s father, Jonathan Pakele, said.
Erin Pakele is a coach and former gymnast, but Jesse Pakele also credits his dad for some of his unique talents.
“OK, this is back in the 80s,” Jonathan Pakele said with a big laugh. “Daddy was like a little b-boy and I could do at the most two-and-a-half ugly flairs!”
“I got to see a lot of videos of him doing it and a lot of pictures, and that kind of inspired me to keep going with like the flair type moves,” Jesse Pakele said. “My mom was also a gymnast, too, so that definitely played a role in the genes.”
And played a role in his love for floor exercise, where, in Ann Arbor, he stood atop the podium as the Big Ten champion after an incredible routine with four stuck landings.
“Oh yeah, I stuck that pass, and I was like, ‘Oh, this this really could be, like, I could be sticking all of these,’” Jesse Pakele said, thinking back on nailing his first tumbling pass, a front full twist right into a double front flip in a piked position. “And I stuck my next pass and I was like, ‘I know I have these last two.’”
His mom, however, was nervous about one specific, basic skill.
“That dang scale that everybody hates,” Erin Pakele said. “That’s the part that I was holding my breath, right? When he stuck [the last pass], yeah, that was just, it was huge.”
Now Jesse Pakele moves to an even bigger stage: the NCAA national championships. The thing is, when it comes down to it, it’s the same stage. The competition is in Ann Arbor at the Crisler Center, where the Big Ten Championships were held.
There is one big difference, though: this time, his parents will be in the stands.
“They’re the reason I am here today,” Jesse Pakele said. “So just to be able to put it out there for them and say that it’s all worth it, it was really worth it. And my dreams come true.”