Teagan Ohmes-White is going to high places in the future.

The Mexico student made her college plans clear on Wednesday at the Mexico Sports Complex of competing at the Division I level in gymnastics at the University of Arizona. Ohmes-White is the first Mexico athlete to sign for college gymnastics since Kelsy Landreth signed for the University of Missouri in 2011.

Ohmes-White said she wished to be pushed to be at her best athletically and academically so Division I is what she wanted. She will study business management at Arizona with hopes of being a college gymnastics coach in the future.

“It’s always been a dream of mine since I was little,” Ohmes-White said. “I’ve even found pieces of paper writing down my top schools and Arizona was in that list. It really set in once I could go to camps and clinics with colleges, and they were really interested in me and talking.”

Prior to her career as a Wildcat, Ohmes-White said she has become accustomed to competing amongst high level competition. The highest level in youth gymnastics competition is level 10, and she said she has competed at that level for six years. 

Ohmes-White has been with Show-Me Gymnastics in Columbia and has been all around the state and the country. She has competed in various state and national competitions in places such as Las Vegas, Iowa, Minnesota, Florida and Texas after her interest for the sport was sparked early in her life.

“I’ve been gymnastics since I was about four years old,” Ohmes-White said. “I first started with tumbling classes, and I really loved those. Then my dad saw that somebody from Mexico was committing to Mizzou for gymnastics so he put me in. Ever since then, I loved it and it was all I wanted to do when I was little.”

It is difficult for Ohmes-White to pick her favorite activity in gymnastics as she lends her talents to all four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. At level 10, her personal-best scores are 9.525 for vault, 9.375 for bars, 9.500 for beam and 9.400 for floor. 

“My favorite would have to be vault or floor. If I had to say one, I’d probably say vault, right now at least,” Ohmes-White said, with a laugh.

Just like Ohmes-White loves to airborne in the vault, she would like to see Arizona rise. The Wildcats are nationally ranked, and last year, they finished third in their NCAA regional.

“I just want to contribute to the team as much as I possibly can and move Arizona up in the ranks,” Ohmes-White said.