March 30, 2018
By Madeleine Balestrier, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - For most households, family dinners are spent around the dining room table, but for sophomore men's gymnast Brayden Borromeo, dinners were spent at the local YMCA where his family grew to love gymnastics together.
"It really gave us a lot of together time," Brayden's mother, Renee Borromeo, said. "We didn't very often get all of us sitting around the dinner table together in our house but we would often have together at the gym or at restaurants."
Before the Borromeos found their second family at Penn State, they created their close-knit nuclear family in Littlestown, Pennsylvania as each of the four Borromeo children found themselves spending time together and training in preparation for the next gymnastics event.
At the head of the family stands Renee and Nino Borromeo; two established professionals in the physical therapy field. Renee is an associate teaching professor at Mont Alto, and the program head for all of the Physical Therapy programs in Penn State's commonwealth, while her husband, Nino, is a practicing physical therapist.
"It really was helpful to have them there to be able to diagnose injuries and to help with recovery and just be there all the time for me," Brayden's older brother and former Penn State gymnast, Josh Borromeo, said on how his parents helped his own gymnastics career.
Aside from their ability to help their children through injuries, the two parents also immersed themselves in the gymnastics community in their own way. Renee coached, while Nino was the president of the Gymnastics Parents Association at the previously mentioned YMCA.
"Gymnastics was really one of the core activities that my family was involved in," Josh said. "My mother coached, my father was president of the gymnastics parents' organization growing up when we were younger, so I mean a lot of our vacations, a lot of our family friends, were involved with gymnastics."
Josh, the oldest of the four Borromeo children, first began gymnastics when he was five-years-old.
"One day Josh, the oldest, came home from school with a little flyer that said it's an after-school program and they would bus the kids from the school to the YMCA for once a week an hour of gymnastics and would bus them back and that started it," Renee said. "Next thing you know, he's going three days a week then we're going five days then we ended up being seven days a week."
From there, the Borromeos became a gymnastics family as Renee and Nino's two daughters, Maiata and Eliza, and their youngest son, Brayden, followed in Josh's footsteps.
"We just were in the gym all the time, every weekend," Renee said. "There were sometimes four different meets in four different places and with all four kids going."
"We all had something we could connect upon," Brayden said. "It really brought us a lot closer because we were all in the gym all the time and you could always look over and see what your brothers and sisters were doing during gymnastics...We always strived to be better than each other because we wanted everyone to be the best that they could be."
Their childhood competitive gymnastic careers sent them across the country from Georgia all the way to Oregon.
"Car rides, plane trips, we did those things and it became apart of our family vacation structure and we just spent a lot of time together," Renee said.
The Borromeos pursued their love for gymnastics, athletics, achievement, and each other to the doorsteps of Rec Hall and Penn State.
"Really there was no question in anyone's minds where they were going to go to school and it was through the connection and just visiting the campuses and getting a feel for the culture that we really really started to love it," Renee said on Penn State.
Although Maiata and Eliza chose to diverge from their gymnastics background upon admission to Penn State, they found ways to unite their family's shared work ethic and athleticism.
While pursuing an arts and architecture degree, Maiata involved herself with Penn State's competitive ballroom dance team. She is now an established interior designer in New York.
As a current senior at Penn State, Eliza will be graduating as an ambassador for Changing Health, Attitudes and Actions to Recreate Girls (CHAARG), with a kinesiology degree. She plans to pursue a doctorate in physical therapy after graduation.
"What you need in gymnastics is that kind of high level of motivation," Renee said. "You fall a thousand times before you ever get it right and to set the goal and work hard for a long time to achieve it. It takes that kind of a personality and I think it builds that kind of personality too. I can see they are all successful as young adults...you know it kind of still permeates their lives that goal setting and the long-term goals and being able to figure out the steps that it takes to get there."
Before the two sisters made their way to Happy Valley as students, the Borromeos first joined the Penn State and men's gymnastics community when Josh joined the team in 2005. In the tradition of head coach Randy Jepson and the Penn State's gymnastics program, Josh fully embodied the role of student-athlete as he majored in mechanical engineering and specialized in still rings.
"The gymnastics team, my gosh, talk about Randy Jepson," Renee said. "Wow. The coach I would pick out of every coach in the country. He is such a good coach such a good molder of men, but really, he is more concerned about these kids as people than as gymnasts...the priorities are in the right place and its just been so so good on all levels. I can't say enough about that."
"The Penn State guys were my heroes and so that's where I really wanted to go in middle school and high school," Josh said.
Randy and Josh worked together to help secure a national championship in 2007 and created an opportunity for Josh to captain the 2008 squad.
That 2007 championship was not only a pivotal moment for Jepson, the Penn State men's gymnastic team and Josh, but also Brayden, a young and inspiring gymnast.
"It's been funny to watch Josh when he was on the team and see his little brother, Brayden," Jepson said. "He would be doing mushroom and you know a little tiny kid working on stuff and I just knew he would develop and be a solid guy.
"I really felt like I was apart of the team and I was giving them everything that I could," Brayden said. "Being apart of that really just made me fall in the love with the sport and fall in love with Penn State."
For Brayden, seeing his older siblings succeed only motivated him further.
"I just want to make everyone proud," Brayden said. "Everyone who has come before me has made my parents so proud so I just want to keep that tradition going."
"What I wanted for Brayden was just to have an experience like I had at Penn State," Josh said. "I wanted him to have that same experience bonding with his teammates and really kind of cultivating this family atmosphere. That's something that I've tried to make sure he recognizes that is more special than any other championship you could win. It's what I cherished most about being a Penn State athlete."
"I'm here for the team," Brayden added. "I'm here to do what I need to do to make this team better and if that's putting on three routines a week, I'll do that. If it's being the biggest cheerleader to get my team going, I'll do that. Everything is about the team here and that's what I love about it."
While Brayden is in Happy Valley doing everything he can for his Penn State teammates, his first team- his family, will always be a driving force for him, and the sport of gymnastics helped to bring them all together.