University of Georgia Athletics
Quick Chat: Alyssa Perez-Lugones
January 09, 2020 | Gymnastics, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
Alyssa Perez-Lugones's face is often lit up and full of joy and energy. She's a Georgia gymnast and the Gymdogs tend to be a pretty enthusiastic, upbeat bunch. When she mentioned her interest in crocheting, though, the dials got turned up to 11.
Plopped down on a big mat inside the Suzanne Yoculan Gymnastics Center before practice Tuesday, not far from the balance beams, the sophomore from Duluth, Ga., talked about crochet, fear, fruit and much more during a fun and wide-ranging Quick Chat. Perez-Lugones and the Gymdogs will open their home schedule Friday night against LSU at Stegeman Coliseum.
Here's some of what she had to say:
Frierson: Everything else here looks like it could be really fun to do, but the beam just looks terrifying.
Perez-Lugones: [Laughs.] Oh, it is absolutely terrifying for me, too.
Frierson: Still?
Perez-Lugones: Oh, yeah, I got on it and I'm like, are you sure?, if I think about it too much. It's crazy, sometimes you'll have like an out-of-body experience and you're like, I'm actually doing that right now. It's like humanly impossible., but it's fun.
Frierson: I've talked to Georgia divers who still get a big unnerved when they go off the platform, which is 10 meters up.
Perez-Lugones: Isn't that crazy?
Frierson: How do you manage that and overcome that, the nervousness?
Perez-Lugones: I go back and think about all the training that we've done, and it definitely puts me at ease, especially in the stressor situations. And we really try to mimic that here (in practice). It takes me back to my training and everything that we've done, and that puts me at ease.
Frierson: Does being able to handle those kinds of situations, having the mental game to do it, does that show up in other parts of your life?
Perez-Lugones: Yes, quite often. We say here, everything is a learning experience, and even farther than gymnastics, just the discipline and determination and resilience that you learn here, you can definitely apply it to your whole life. So when things get hard in school or in my personal life, it's kind of like I have one step up in being able to know how to handle it.
Frierson: As we do this it's still the first week of the new year, so is there anything in or out of gymnastics that you really want to do or see or experience in 2020?
Perez-Lugones: As a person, I would just like to grow a lot more and be more understanding and helpful to other people. As a team, I think we can also do that, too, be more uplifting towards each other. We did a great job last year doing that and this year, just from the fall, you can tell we all are together as one. And just to have that show up in a gymnastics setting under a high-stress situation, even more than it did last year, will definitely help.
Frierson: Do you have a creative side? Is there something creative you do or wish you could do?
Perez-Lugones: I'm very artistically inclined, so I love to draw; I love to sing, I love to dance; I also crochet [laughs], so I've got my grandma goin' sometimes [laughs].
It's kind of nice to be able to have things like that to do, because I don't like to watch TV all the time, it kind of hurts my eyes. One of my teammates, Cash (Amanda Cashman), we sing together sometimes, and me and some of the other girls like to dance together. It's really fun to be able to do something else.
Frierson: I have to dig in on the crochet a little bit. How did you get started in that?
Perez-Lugones: My older sister crocheted little bracelets or something like that, and I was like, I can do that. I looked up a YouTube video of it and just started going. I think I started with a blanket, which was way too big. It was way crooked, too [laughs], and my mom was like, "Yay, it's so pretty." And I'm like, "It's not, it's way too crooked!."
I love to do it for my family, just as gifts and stuff. It's really fun to do.
Frierson: How much better have you gotten since you first started?
Perez-Lugones: So much better, so much better. It's fun to figure out and count, like you actually have to do a lot of counting to know where you're at. It's fun to get to the point where I have a steady pace and I can go pretty fast — it's just time-consuming [laughs].
Frierson: Is there specific you'd like to crochet one day?
Perez-Lugones: One thing I've always wanted to do was be able to crochet blankets for the winter and hand them out to the homeless here in Athens, because we do have a high homeless population and I would love to be able to give back in some way. But I don't crochet fast enough [laughs].
Frierson: That's a beautiful sentiment, though, and even if you can make just one blanket, that's still going to help someone. Or maybe you can teach the whole team to crochet and you can join forces.
Perez-Lugones: Yeah, I should tell Courtney (Kupets Carter).
Frierson: There's something nice about doing crochet in such a digital era, with all screens all the time.
Perez-Lugones: I'll have the TV on sometimes, just Netflix or something, and I won't even be paying attention, I'll just be doing the crochet.
Frierson: What's something you could eat every day and never get tired of it?
Perez-Lugones: Fruit [laughs]. I have copious amounts of fruit a day, it's just like the best thing ever. I don't know, I just really started to get into eating fruit this past year, especially apples. It's just so easy for me to grab one and go.
Frierson: If you could travel anywhere in the world on somebody else's dime, where would you go?
Perez-Lugones: I would want to go to the North Pole and see the Northern Lights [laughs], with a lot of coats and warm wear because it's very cold up there [laughs].
(This Q&A was lightly edited for length and clarity.)
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
