Katelyn Ohashi put the joy back into gymnastics

All that is good about the sport of gymnastics was captured in a two-minute video in January.

Katelyn Ohashi, a senior at UCLA, tumbled and danced her way to a perfect score in the floor exercise at the Collegiate Challenge in Anaheim, Calif.

The score wasn't the story. Ohashi was rewarded with 10.0 by gymnastics judges 11 times in her college career, nine of them in floor exercise. While it was a difficult routine, Ohashi never looked stressed. She smiled throughout the entire 90-second routine. Combine that with music and crowd reaction, you have a viral video.

If you're a YouTube aficionado, you probably have seen it. The video has been seen more than 44 million times.

"Just fantastic," Senator Kamala Harris of California wrote. "The ground is no place for a champion," the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said.

Ohashi will make her professional debut, and likely her gymnastics swan song, Wednesday, Aug. 21, as a gymnastics participant in the inaugural Aurora Games at Times Union Center.

A one-time elite gymnast who won the 2013 American Cup over future Olympian Simone Biles, Ohashi became internationally famous, thanks to a medium that didn't exist when Nadia Comeneci posted the first perfect score 43 years ago. YouTube wasn't founded until 2005.

"It's been different," Ohashi said, "seeing how many celebrities had posted about it — I would never have expected it. It's all exciting things that are happening. It was a big surprise."

Ohashi, who received her UCLA degree last month in gender studies, seems to be in a good place with gymnastics. It hasn't always been that way.

She has written and spoken about the pain, stress and expectations she endured as a teenager while trying to fulfill Olympic dreams. At 16, she was forced to take a year off because of a...