“My goals are to hopefully make Worlds later this year,” Joscelyn Roberson said at the start of the year. And she has accomplished it. The University of Arkansas sophomore who served as one of Team USA’s alternates at just 18 for the 2024 Paris Olympics sustained an injury back in 2023 at the Antwerp Worlds. However, she made sure to not let that ankle injury define her career. But now, after she has grabbed the ticket to Jakarta, the same injury is raising new questions.

Recently, in a conversation with Olympics.com, she shared, “I felt very confident coming into Worlds after I had gone home and was training. Then, when I got here, my gymnastics just changed.” At the World Championships selection event at the end of September 2025, she secured her spot on the team with a third-place finish, just behind Dulcy Caylor in first and Leanne Wong in second.

But right as the World Championships are set to unfold in Jakarta, Roberson was not fully in her element at the team’s practice session. She revealed that she’s been struggling with finding her timing and rhythm.

Despite tumbling a bit in the lead-up to the major event, the 19-year-old Arkansas Razorback still remains confident, as she clearly stated, “We’re working on it. We’re getting it back”. But adding to the situation is the fact that her years-old injury back from the 2023 World Gymnastics Championships might be making things tougher.

Roberson shared, “I had a little bit of a short landing in the back, so my ankles are a little bit sore right now. Nothing too bad, but it did affect my floor, definitely.” Her double layout backflip on the floor and powerful tumbling are the elements that leave her fans in awe. She’s also known for executing difficult vaults in competitions like the double twisting Yurchenko. However, she has only been “finding her block” in vault practice.

Talking about the same, Joscelyn Roberson shared, “Vault has just been a learning curve since I’ve gotten here. I felt very confident in my vaults coming into Worlds, but they’ve just been a little different, so trying to work that out and try to get those back to normal.” Because of this, Roberson’s participation in vault qualification will be a “game-time decision.”

“I’m not sure. That will be up to [USA Gymnastics high performance lead] Chellsie [Memmel], my coach, and just how it goes over the next few days”, said Roberson. However, she confidently pressed the fact that she would be concentrating particularly on her floor routine. “For now, we’re just trying to make sure that floor is good to go because my floor has been looking really strong in these trainings here, and it’s definitely not what I showed today”, she shared.

How Joscelyn Roberson turned vault struggles into motivation for her elite comeback

Joscelyn Roberson had quite a concerning 2024 to begin with. Back at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, Roberson suffered a brutal blow. Just as she was warming up ahead of the team finals, the 19-year-old sustained an ankle injury. With the Paris Olympics approaching, her dreams of representing her nation on the world’s biggest stage seemed to be fading away. But for Roberson, giving up is never an option.

Thus, she recovered from her injury in time and came to the Olympic trials to try and stake her spot—a prospect that seemed impossible mere weeks before. But after a mental and physical fight on the mats, she got the nod for the Paris Olympics, traveling as a team alternate.

Meanwhile, after coming back and joining the Arizona Razorbacks, Roberson initially wanted to take it slow heading into the 2025 season. But midway into her NCAA season, the 19-year-old phenom realized that the urge to compete in elite gymnastics was building within her.

Reflecting on the same, Roberson said in May 2025, “I really miss the grind of it all. So I’ve been so excited to get back. I’m going to stay here at Arkansas and train with Chris [Brooks], who’s going to be my main head coach for the elite season. He was so excited about it. He’s so pumped. I just love having that in the gym every day, just the same excitement that I have about Elite gymnastics. He has the exact same excitement and is ready to go on this journey with me.”

What was even more intriguing was the fact that Roberson was eager to improve on her vault despite struggling with it earlier. Back in May 2025, Roberson promised to practice her bigger skills at least once a week.  “Vault was where I didn’t do it as much. That’s been a little bit trickier coming back and I’ve been more nervous to do it, more antsy. For tumbling, it’s just like riding a bike. I’ve been doing full Elite workouts for two weeks now and it’s back to normal. It’s just so much fun. I forgot how fun super super hard gymnastics was.”

She further added that she had been training for 20 hours in the gym earlier. But now, Roberson has taken it up a notch to 28 hours! Surely, the zeal within the 19-year-old is palpable. Now, it remains to be seen whether she can excel on the big stage.