University of St. Thomas Law Journal

The Top Three Lessons Every Law Student Can Learn from the Pommel Horse Guy

*Maggie Chen

This past August, whether you are an avid fan of the Olympics or someone who could not care less about sports, the big data analysis must have pushed news about Stephen Nedoroscik, also known as “the Pommel Horse Guy,” to your phone at least once.

While this 25-year-old gymnast might have clinched his Olympic spot as a one-event-only specialist for Team USA,1 he certainly ended his trip to Paris as the “Clark Kent of Pommel Horse.”2 His calm demeanor leading up to his stellar performance on the pommel horse in the team’s final competition not only secured Team USA a place on the podium and ended the sixteen-year medal drought, but also generated creative content on the internet.3 But beyond the TikTok trends and Instagram reels, what are some lessons we as law students can learn from Stephen Nedoroscik as we kick off this new academic year?

Lesson 1: Find Your Pommel Horse

             As a little boy who climbed a fifteen-foot rope on the first day of his gymnastics class, Stephen knew gymnastics was his passion from a young age.4 But pure passion by itself does not land someone on the Olympic podium. For Stephen, although he grew up being a decent all-around gymnast, once he got to high school, pommel horse became the only event he was still progressing in.5 During his junior year of high school, a club coach discovered his special talent on pommel horse and told him he could be a national champion one day.6 Feeling inspired, Stephen grinded his skills and won his first junior national title on pommel horse that year.7 His junior national title ultimately led him to Pennsylvania State University where he became a pommel horse specialist.8 His focus and effort on pommel horse truly paid off as he continued to collect national and world titles on the apparatus and earned himself a spot on Team USA as the pommel horse specialist this Olympic season.9

Reflecting on Stephen’s story, the question we as law students should think about is—what is our pommel horse? For first-year law students, your pommel horse might be the main reason why you decided to go to law school. What motivated you to pursue a career in law? The first year of law school is often said to be the most stressful one because law students need to learn new and challenging legal knowledge while demystifying the unspoken rules of law school and battling imposter syndrome.10 This is why knowing and remembering the main reason behind your pursuit of a legal career is so important for first-year students. Without your pommel horse, it is so easy to feel lost in the mist of all the obligations and opportunities during this overwhelming first year. So, to all the first-year law students, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to write down your pommel horse on a piece of paper and put your pommel horse on a visible spot in your designated study area as a constant reminder for yourself throughout your first year of law school.

For second- and third-year law students who already have a general understanding of law school and the legal field, our pommel horse can be more specific. It might be an area of law we want to practice or an extracurricular activity we want to participate in. Although many seasoned attorneys like to encourage first-year law students by saying “it gets better from here,” second and third-year of law school can be just as overwhelming since many law students now need to juggle between challenging legal coursework and extracurricular activities with high commitment like law review and moot court. Therefore, prioritizing is more important than ever for second- and third-year law students. So, as we get ready for another exciting year, also take some time to think about our specific pommel horse for this year and how to prioritize activities that help us grind our skills for our pommel horse this year.

Lesson 2: Find Your Inner Peace

In addition to Stephen’s expertise on pommel horse and the key role he played in helping Team USA secure the bronze medal, his calm demeanor before the competition also contributed to everyone’s obsession over him on the internet. The image of him leaning his head back on the wall with his eyes closed as he waited for Team USA’s pommel horse rotation went absolutely viral on the internet.11 But, as Stephen revealed during an interview on the Tonight Show, he was not sleeping in that photo.12 In fact, he was trying to maximize his later performance by conducting breathing exercises and visualizing the routine.13

Because of the way event drawing worked out, pommel horse was Team USA’s last rotation, which meant Stephen had to wait for five hours after warming up to compete in the one event he went to Paris for.14 But Stephen excelled under the unthinkable amount of stress. During the long waiting period, he played charades, solved Rubik’s Cubes, cheered on his teammates, conducted breathing exercises, and visualized his routine.15 When it was time for him to compete on the pommel horse, he took off his glasses and delivered a nearly perfect score for Team USA.16 The level of stress law students face is nowhere near the your-country-depends-on-your-one-performance-at-the-Olympics level of stress that Stephen endured, but the takeaway here is—finding our inner peace by controlling the things we can control.

Just like how Stephen can’t control if Team USA will draw pommel horse first or last, there are also things in law school we can’t control, such as the curved grading system.17 The curved grading system is essentially a normalization technique that acknowledges the differences of students’ academic performance by artificially distributing grades along a bell-shaped curve.18 For example, in a class, the top percentage of students usually receive the highest grade (such as an A).19 The middle group (also where the majority of the students fall) receive a lower grade within the average range (such as a B).20 The lowest performing students then receive the lowest grades (such as a C, D, or F).21 Because of this set up, the curved grading system is often criticized for incentivizing “unhealthy competitions among law students” and adding “undue stress on academic performance.”22

Nevertheless, the reality is, until someone with more power than us makes the final decision to completely remove the curved grading system, we as law students must live with it. We can’t control how classes are curved just like how Stephen can’t control whether he is competing in pommel horse first or last. But we can control how we study just like how Stephen can control how he spends his waiting period.

Before law school, I was an elementary school teacher for four years. I can’t count how many times I have told my students who were upset about losing games the most cliché encouragement—the result does not matter as long as you worked for it. It is your effort that counts. However, every time I said those words to my young learners, my own competitive nature always silently screamed “hypocrite” inside my head. But looking back at the last two years of my law school journey now, these chicken-soup-for-the-soul style words are actually essential to my experiences so far. So, instead of stressing over the curve you can’t control, why not find your charades, your breathing exercises, and your visualization of the routine? Once you take your energy off the curve and focus on finding your learning style and understanding the course materials, you too can go into law school finals confidently the same way Stephen took off his glasses and stepped on that pommel horse in Paris.

Lesson 3: Find Your Rubik’s Cube

Amazingly, pommel horse is not Stephen’s only specialty. He is also a Rubik’s Cube pro.23 He completed a Rubik’s Cube in just over nine seconds before competing in the team’s event in Paris.24 During an interview with the Today Show, Stephen shared that solving a Rubik’s Cube has been a stress reliever for him.25

Law school, especially the first semester of law school can feel incredibly busy, stressful, and sometimes daunting. The competitive environment can make law students feel like nothing else in our lives matters, so in turn, we dedicate more time and energy into law school related work, which often creates more stress and hatred. That’s why we all need a Rubik’s Cube in our life—a hobby and stress reliever that can take our mind off our law school obligations temporarily and rejuvenate us. The hobby does not have to be grand or epic—remember, a small Rubik’s Cube helped Stephen with the amount of stress he was handling.

After finding our own Rubik’s Cube, whether it is coloring, fitness walking, or spending time with friends and family, we need to consistently block time off in advance for it and stick to the schedule. Otherwise, the busy law school schedule can easily make our hobby a backburner. Personally, my Rubik’s Cube is my weekly figure skating training with my coach. The ice rink is where I can completely take my mind off law school and regenerate my brain cells. Even though I am no longer actively competing, I always keep a one-hour training session every week with my coach to hold myself accountable to my skating schedule.

So, to all of my fellow law students, before jumping into our already packed law school schedule this year, let’s all take a few moments to find our pommel horse, our inner peace, and our own Rubik’s Cube. We might not be able to become an Olympic medalist or America’s next sweetheart like Stephen Nedoroscik, but we can all craft a year of law school experience that works best for us.

*Maggie Chen, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law class of 2025, Senior Editor of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. 

  1. Kaetlyn Liddy, Frederick Richard, Brody Malone and more named to men’s U.S. Olympic gymnastics team, NBC News (June 29, 2024, 6:15 PM CDT), https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/olympics/frederick-richard-brody-malone-named-mens-us-olympic-gymnastics-team-rcna159612 [https://perma.cc/LB2D-RTJJ]. ↩︎
  2. GMA Team, Stephen Nedoroscik becomes breakout star of 2024 Paris Olympics: What to Know about the pommel horse pro, ABC News (Aug. 3, 2024, 3:30 PM), https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/stephen-nedoroscik-pommel-horse-olympics/story?id=112434950#:~:text=The%202024%20Olympics%20in%20Paris,Olympic%20medal%20in%2016%20years [https://perma.cc/SM3H-XDZF]. ↩︎
  3. Id. ↩︎
  4. David Pollak, Stephen Nedoroscik: The Penn State two-time national champion you most likely haven’t heard of, The Daily Collegian (Feb. 28, 2019), https://www.psucollegian.com/sports/division_one_sports/stephen-nedoroscik-the-penn-state-two-time-national-champion-you-most-likely-haven-t-heard/article_b55cd05e-3adf-11e9-9c27-6b58a2596b22.html [https://perma.cc/T4KQ-VPJC]. ↩︎
  5. Id. ↩︎
  6. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Nedoroscik Talks Becoming a Viral Meme at Paris Olympics; Solves Rubik’s Cube in 15 Seconds, YouTube (Aug. 14, 2024), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbK0CiKbaY [hereinafter The Tonight Show]. ↩︎
  7. Id. ↩︎
  8. Id. ↩︎
  9. See Stephen Nedoroscik, USA Gymnastics, https://members.usagym.org/pages/athletes/nationalTeamMen.html?id=256464 [https://perma.cc/8XVT-FC9Y] (last visited Aug. 20, 2024); See also Liddy, supra note 1. ↩︎
  10. See generally David A. Grenardo, The Phantom Menace to Professional Identity Formation and Law Success: Imposter Syndrome, 47 U. Dayton L. Rev. 369, 373–76 (2022). ↩︎
  11. The Tonight Show, supra note 6. ↩︎
  12. The Tonight Show, supra note 6. ↩︎
  13. The Tonight Show, supra note 6. ↩︎
  14. The Tonight Show, supra note 6. ↩︎
  15. Brittany Miller, Pommel Horse gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik reveals if he was actually sleeping at the Olympics Independent (Aug. 14, 2024 16:12, BST), https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/stephen-nedoroscik-olympics-sleeping-b2596282.html [https://perma.cc/U5NC-T4YV]; The Tonight Show, supra note 6. ↩︎
  16. Miller, supra note 15. ↩︎
  17. Francis Mundin, Understanding Law Schools Grading System: How Does the Curve Work?, Law Crossing (Mar. 22, 2024), https://www.lawcrossing.com/article/900054235/Understanding-Law-School-s-Grading-System-How-Does-the-Curve-Work/ [https://perma.cc/6RSC-FHKX]. ↩︎
  18. Id. ↩︎
  19. Id. ↩︎
  20. Id. ↩︎
  21. Id. ↩︎
  22. Id. ↩︎
  23. GMA Team, supra note 2. ↩︎
  24. GMA Team, supra note 2. ↩︎
  25. TODAY, US men’s gymnastics team wins first medal in 16 years, YouTube (July 30, 2024), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ep_-UDyZ2g. ↩︎

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