Olympic gold medalist Jade Carey is back for her junior year competing for the Oregon State gymnastics team, but this season is going to be a little bit different.

During her freshman and sophomore years, Carey competed in all four events at almost every meet. That isn’t going to be the case this year.

Throughout the season, Carey will continue preparing for the U.S. gymnastics team trials, which will be held in June, just a few weeks before the start of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

So she is going to dial back her workload for the NCAA season and will focus on the uneven parallel bars and the balance beam.

“It’s going to be different for me to not be in every single event, but it’s definitely what is needed,” Carey said.

She thinks there are advantages to not competing in the all-around at every meet. Carey said this will give her an opportunity to be a better teammate as she has more time during meets to encourage and cheer for the other gymnasts.

She has new routines planned for both the bars and the beam and Oregon State fans will get to watch her try out different ideas in preparation for the Olympic trials.

“Bars might change, honestly, from meet to meet. There’s a lot of skills on bars that I’m going to be training for elite, so just getting competition experience with a different mix of skills would be good, as long as I can do them super clean and perfect,” Carey said.

That leaves an opening for the all-round spot in the rotation and head coach Tanya Chaplin said there are several candidates. The leading contender might be former rival Sage Thompson.

The junior transferred to Oregon State after competing for Utah. Thompson was first-team all-Pac-12 and second-team all-American on the bars during her freshman season. She has competed at the NCAA finals twice and brings a great deal of experience to the Oregon State lineup.

Another all-around candidate is freshman Sophia Esposito from Melville, New York.

Chaplin said the team will rely on seniors Ariana Young and Sydney Gonzales, who will compete on the floor, vault and beam.

Young has a new floor routine she started working on about a month ago with Chaplin and a choreographer.

“It’s more upbeat and dancey. Funky, like ’70s,” Young said, adding that it is a lot of work to learn a new routine but she feels like she has gotten through the hard part. “It is a challenge in the beginning because you’re so used to doing the other one it becomes like second nature and then you actually have to think for a new floor routine. I’m starting to get past the point where I have to think as much and now it’s just more fun.”

Gonzales doesn’t have any completely new routines this year, but her floor routine will look different. She has new music and choreography for that routine, but the skill elements remain the same.

Gonzales can’t believe her senior season is about to begin.

“Really excited, maybe a little nostalgic. I’m sad that it went by so fast,” Gonzales said.

She wants to make this final season count and is aiming for one individual goal in particular: earning All-American honors on the beam. To accomplish that she will have to be ranked in the top 16 nationally in the beam going into the postseason.

“It’s all about getting those really big scores week to week,” Gonzales said.

Sophomore Ellie Weaver may join Young and Gonzales as a three-event competitor. Chaplin said Weaver competed on bars last season and has come into this year looking like a good option on the beam and the floor, as well.

Chaplin expects junior Kaitlin Garcia to be part of the lineup on the vault and the floor.

Junior Lauren Letzsch would also be in the mix on the vault, beam and floor, but her availability is in doubt for health reasons.

The team will open the season with the annual Orange & Black exhibition at 2 p.m. Saturday at Gill Coliseum. Admission is free.

Chaplin said this year’s event will be run as if it were a regular meet. There will be judges, the team will be divided into orange and black squads, and they will go through their rotations as if it were a dual meet.

“Definitely everyone will benefit from it,” Chaplin said.

Oregon State is ranked 13th in the preseason Women’s College Gymnastics Association poll. Only the top eight teams advance to the NCAA championships.

The Beavers have come close the last two years and want to crack that top eight this season.

“I know it’s something we talk about in here every single day,” Carey said. “We’re all pushing in here every single day to get to nationals, so I know that’s been a goal for a long time for a lot of us. So we’re excited to work as hard as we can and hopefully make that happen.”