Kristi Arnett flew into the air off the uneven bars, hoping to land her double backward somersault dismount. All did not go according to plan.

The 16-year-old gymnast smacked down on the concrete floor, missing the mats beneath the bars. One fractured elbow and a month in a cast later, she was hankering to get back on the bars and try the ”blind pirouette” move again.

”Pretty much I got up right away, after my cast was off, and I went for it,” Arnett says, a resolute tone in her soft voice. ”You just have to convince yourself that you’ve done it so many times and you’ve only fallen once.”

The Redmond High School junior trains five days a week, four hours each session, at Bend’s Acrovision Sports Center. She says she doesn’t like to take days off, because she misses the energy she derives from being in the gym and mastering difficult moves. She says the month in a cast nearly drove her crazy.

”It was bad,” Arnett says with a smile. ”I still came in every day and did conditioning. I did everything I could do without an arm.

”Any days that I have off, I want to get back in the gym,” she adds. ”The feeling of getting a new skill or accomplishing something is an incredible feeling. It keeps me going.”

Arnett, whose mother enrolled her in lessons at the age of 4, says the elbow fracture was her first significant injury. She’s no stranger to pain, however.

”Gymnasts are always sore,” Arnett says. ”Every day, I don’t think you go without something being sore.

”It’s a pretty disappointing thing to get an injury, because you know you’ve worked so hard,” she adds. ”But it was probably for the best. I think I needed a break.”

This Saturday, Arnett will get the chance to test out her newly healed elbow as she and nine other Acrovision gymnasts compete at the Jump Start meet at the National Academy of Artistic Gymnasts in Eugene. It’s the team’s first meet of the season, which runs through May.

Arnett will not attempt the blind pirouette this Saturday, says Rich Gustafson, Acrovision owner and gymnastics team coach.

”It (the blind pirouette) adds a lot of difficulty (to a routine),” Gustafson says. ”Not a lot of people do it. She’s still mastering it.”

Gustafson says that Arnett hopes to have the move perfected in time for January competitions.

To the uninitiated, any gymnastics move described by the word ”blind” sounds scary. For Arnett, it’s just another skill that she says can be intimidating at first, but ultimately is a source of confidence.

The blind pirouette involves a giant backward swing around the higher of the two bars. When the gymnast completes the swing, she pauses in a handstand and performs a full body turn in that vertical handstand position. The move is complete when the gymnast lands a double ”salto” dismount.

”That one was hard for me to get,” Arnett says. ”A fear kicks in. There’s something new every day that your mind wants to tell you you can’t do. That’s the hardest part. You have to train yourself to conquer the skills. Sometimes that can be really easy and sometimes, it takes time.”

Arnett, ranked in the top eight for Oregon gymnasts ages 16 to 18, competes at Level 10, which Gustafson explains is the second-highest level at which any amateur gymnast can compete. Beyond that, Arnett says, there is the ”Elite” level, at which the top 200 gymnasts in the country – including Olympians – compete.

The petite blonde says she wants to finish in the top three in the state and regional finals, and to qualify for the national championships. Last year, she was seventh in regional competition, which earned her a berth to the nationals in Florida, where she finished 100th out of 130.

”There’s a certain value of skills she needs to add, which we’ve worked on all summer,” Gustafson says. ”We hope that she’ll be in the top 50 at nationals this year, which is pretty awesome.”

Arnett says her ultimate goal is to earn a spot on a college team, which will offer her the opportunity to work with gymnasts that she can look up to. She says that as one of Acrovision’s top gymnasts, she sometimes feels the weight of being a role model.

”It’s hard because all of the girls look up to me,” Arnett says. ”It’s hard because I want to do the best I can for them, but it’s frustrating because I don’t always have someone to look up to myself. At times I get down, but then I have to remind myself that so many little girls look up to me.”

Leading by example, Arnett says she works hard in the gym as well as in the classroom. She maintains a 3.75 grade-point average and says she hopes to show the younger girls that being dedicated to their sport should not have a negative impact on their education.

”School and gymnastics – it’s all I know,” Arnett says with a laugh. ”They’re my whole life, pretty much.”

She spends so many hours at the gym and school that she doesn’t get to share a lot of time with her friends. Often, they’ll stop by the gym to say hi.

”That’s really encouraging for me,” Arnett says. ”They’re really good and supportive, but they don’t quite understand it because they’re not quite as dedicated to a sport like I am.”

Arnett admits to a certain amount of anxiety about working on new moves and current routines. She says the balance beam is her least favorite event, because of the games her brain can play as she attempts to perform intricate maneuvers on a surface only 4 inches wide.

”Every once in a while, it gets to you and you ask yourself why you’re doing it,” Arnett says. ”Then you do it and it’s fine.”

When falls and failures do occur, she says her coaches are there to encourage her. However, she acknowledges, it’s ultimately up to her to overcome the setbacks.

”You practice like you compete,” Arnett says. ”You have to train yourself that if you mess up, you have to get up and try again.”

Dallas Finn can be reached at (541) 383-0393 or at dfinn@bendbulletin.com.