Faith Torrez thought the day would never come when she would finally don the crimson and cream and compete for Oklahoma.
After all, she had been committed to the Sooners since August 2018, the summer before her first year of high school.
“Being committed so young, it’s a long wait and you never really expect it to come but now that it is here, it’s kind of like wow. Being here, it’s another step in life and it’s just really exciting,” Torrez said.
Torrez was a highly-touted recruit from Bristol, Wisconsin, about a 13-hour drive from Norman. Due to her natural physical capabilities, constant positive attitude, elite experience, and a killer double layout tumbling pass, everyone knew Torrez would be an outstanding addition to any collegiate team.
As far as the years between committing and arriving on campus this past fall go, things were not always shiny. Torrez had some shifts in her club career, including moving states to switch clubs and rapidly learning new skills to qualify to compete elite. However, everything paid off for Torrez as she has had quite the freshman campaign, winning seven of the possible 10 Big 12 Newcomer of the Week awards so far this season.
Head coach K.J. Kindler says Torrez is a leading contender for the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year award, announced following the Big 12 Championships.
Torrez is soaking up each moment to hopefully help her team repeat a second-straight national championship because she knows “everybody wants to win.”
As most gymnasts’ careers do, Torrez started gymnastics at age 5. At Scamps Gymnastics in Kenosha, Wisconsin, program director Sandy Brinkman, says she noticed Torrez’s abilities when she played in the facility’s preschool gym at around five years old. Right away, Brinkman noticed how unafraid Torrez was of anything Brinkman suggested she try.
If Brinkman said to try one thing, Torrez would do it with no hesitation.
“She was not afraid of much back then,” Brinkman said. “She was a go-getter. She moved up pretty quickly through the gym, from level to level and we were like, ‘Oh, she has talent!’”
Freshman Faith Torrez during the meet against West Virginia on Feb. 24
Brinkman also noticed Torrez’s natural physical ability allowed her to not only be able to try any skill but to complete it.
“She was strong as an ox,” Brinkman said. “She was that gymnast that was flexible and strong. That’s really hard to find and with a positive attitude, like ‘Give me more, give me more, I wanna learn this, I wanna learn that,’ It was just her personality.”
Brinkman coached Torrez through pre-team to around level four, which was the first level of competitive gymnastics through USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for the sport in the U.S.
Torrez trained with other coaches at the gym as she quickly moved up the levels, amassing many first-place finishes at meets throughout the years, and eventually reaching level 10, the highest level in the Developmental Program and the point at which high school gymnasts decide whether to try elite or continue level 10 and pursue college gymnastics.
In her first year competing level 10, Torrez won the state championship in her age group before qualifying for regionals and nationals, placing eighth in the all around at regionals and fourth at nationals. She continued competing at level 10 for two years before sweeping every event and the all-around at the 2017 Wisconsin Levels 6-10 State Championships.
At this point in her career, Brinkman and her staff began urging Torrez’s family to look at other gyms if Torrez wanted to pursue the elite route, and Torrez was still very much interested. Scamps encouraged the Torrez family to switch to a different gym with more experience training elite gymnasts. Although reluctant, they eventually agreed to start looking elsewhere.
The only problem was Wisconsin is not a state known for consistently producing elite gymnasts, so the Torrez’s looked to the state of Illinois for a gym with a track record of great elites.
Luckily, they found Legacy Elite, a large gym in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, Illinois. The allure of Legacy Elite products like 2012 Olympic alternate Anna Li, 2010 world champion Mackenzie Caquatto and three-time national team member Nia Dennis proved to Torrez it could provide her with the expertise in training for elite.
Once she arrived at Legacy Elite to prepare for the 2018 club season, Torrez learned from Li and showed lots of potential.
“It was actually really exciting,” Li said. “Because we could see the potential she had and she had no idea how far as how much potential she had. She was hard working and super strong and flexible and just had all the qualities that are needed to be a top elite gymnast.”
Freshman Faith Torrez during the meet against Florida on March 3.
With competing elite in mind, Torrez started by continuing level 10 competition and loving the new environment.
“It was great, the coaches, they were amazing,” Torrez said. “Anna (Li), she’s a bars queen and I struggled at bars so she definitely transformed my bars a lot. The coaching staff was really amazing and they really care about their athletes.”
Even after the first competition, Torrez quickly made a splash, winning the all-around in nearly every meet of the 2018 and 2019 seasons. She also won the Junior Olympic National Championship both years and qualified for the prestigious Nastia Liukin Cup each year.
This increased level 10 success inspired Torrez to start training elite in the same calendar year and she began the new training plan after the JO championships were over. Li said Torrez’s evident success carried over quickly into the elite, as quick as her first elite meet.
“It was her very first elite competition,” Li said. “I remember it was American Classics and she won first all-around and was just shocked by it. Everything just came so easy for her because of her talent.”
This first-place finish at the 2019 American Classic qualified Torrez for elite. She competed elite from 2019-21, even internationally, at the 2020 Gymnix International in Montreal, where she won a gold medal.
After her elite career, Torrez stepped back down to level 10 to finish her high school career and won the all-around at her last national championships before transitioning to college.
“Faith had the choice to choose whichever school she wanted,” Li said. “Her recruiting process was fairly easy in that aspect but I think deep down she just knew she wanted to go to Oklahoma.”
Torrez cited the opportunity to win a national championship and how the coaching staff builds a unique bond with each team member as to why she chose Oklahoma. And as she did in level 10, she has made an impact in her freshman season with the Sooners.
In the first meet of her collegiate career, she tied for first on floor and fifth on beam at the Super 16 Invitational before making her all-around debut in the second meet of the season at LSU. At the first home meet vs. Utah and just the third overall meet of her career, she won the all-around.
“They went really good,” Torrez said about her first routines with OU. “They were everything I hoped for, I would say. It was definitely really scary, you know your first routine as a collegiate athlete, that’s scary. But I think I did really well for what I’ve been practicing.”
Freshman Faith Torrez during the meet against Iowa State on Feb. 3
Everything was going almost too well. Torrez’s first fall came at home against Iowa State on bars, where she missed a release move and diminished her chance at winning the all-around that night. Kindler says although Torrez felt it at the moment, she soon let it go and continued performing her routine, ending with a stuck dismount and a smile.
“Faith has the type of personality, she does not let those things weigh her down,” Kindler said. “As a freshman, that’s very hard to do because you feel the pressure, you wanna do well for your team. At the same time, to be able to let that go, that’s a hard thing to do. The way she let that mistake go is very veteran of her considering she’s a freshman.”
Kindler also said Torrez came a long way, especially when stepping up for her team. Her teammates agree.
“She knows how to deliver,” senior Ragan Smith said. “She’s a competitor and when we need to count on her, she’s up and there and she’s ready to go.”
As far as outside the gym, Torrez has loved getting to know her new home she’s been waiting years for. Her newfound friendship with fellow freshmen Ava Siegfeldt and Caitlin Smith has them driving all over town to places like Swig, Target, Victoria’s Pasta Shop and Pickleman’s to get to know where they will live for the next four years.
Torrez and Siegfeldt’s friendship in particular has only grown closer as the pair knew each other before OU. They roomed together at a national team camp in 2019.
“At the very beginning, we didn’t really know each other that well, but we’ve grown so close. She’s a great friend to have, the best friend to have for sure,” Siegfeldt said.
With only the postseason comprising the Big 12 Championships, regionals, and the NCAA National Championships left, Torrez is poised and ready to live her long-awaited dream of competing for Oklahoma and hopefully winning a national championship of her own.
“I would say probably every time I compete," Torrez said. "It just really hits me that I’m here at OU.”
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This story was edited by Colton Sulley.
