Who would’ve thought a Key West’s Children’s Day — always held on that hungover Sunday after the Fantasy Fest parade — would produce a world-class gymnast with her eye on the 2028 Olympics?
Mia Puig was 4 when she saw a tumbling demonstration during Children’s Day at Bayview Park.
“That’s when I knew this was what I wanted to do,” said Mia, who’s now 11 and about to enter sixth grade while training with the U.S. national team in Indianapolis.
Her mom, Myra Puig, knew it as well when she saw her daughter’s drive for gymnastics.
“When she was 4, I was coaching her little soccer team, and she wouldn’t listen to me about soccer; she only did cartwheels.”
By the time Mia was 6, her family was planning to leave Key West for a few years in Miami, where Mia’s dad had better work opportunities. The family wasn’t overly excited about leaving the Keys, “so I promised Mia that when we moved, we’d find her a good gym for gymnastics.”
The coaches at the first gym they tried are now eating their words, and kicking themselves.
“They told me I was too chubby and not very talented,” Mia recalled on Monday at Truman Waterfront Park, where she performed a tumbling demonstration that made it obvious how wrong that first gym was.
“Then we tried a second gym, International Gymnastics, and after an hour there, Mia walked up to me and said, ‘I’m never leaving this gym,’” her mom said.
And they haven’t. Coaches Yanelda and Fernando Veliz, who coached Cuba’s national gymnastics team, have become the Puigs’ extended family, even coming home with them to the Keys to stay with Myra’s brother, Bill Lay and his wife, Amy, who own Key West’s La Trattoria, Virgilio’s martini bar and La Trattoria Oceanside.
“It was great when we competed against that first gym less than a year later, and Mia killed it,” Myra Puig said with the passion of a proud mother. “Everyone kept asking, ‘Is that Mia?’ It felt so, so good.”
But Myra Puig is far from the hyper-competitive mom who pushes her daughter to the brink.
“No way, this is all her,” Myra Puig said. “Every year, I ask her, ‘Do you still want to do this?’ Because once she decides to retire, we can move back to the Keys. But I can tell how dedicated she is from her drive. She wanted to spend two hours in the gym, then four hours, then five. She’s been a virtual student since first grade, because she spends so much time training. Her brother, Julian, is two years older than her and plays ice hockey. So my husband and I divide and conquer.”
The drive has paid off for Mia, who is currently a Level 10 gymnast hoping to enter the Elite level, and currently training in Miami and Indianapolis, where Team USA trains for the Olympics.
“Most Level 10 gymnasts are 15 or so and hoping to be recruited for college, so she still has some time, and you have to be 16 to compete in the Olympics, so she’ll still be too young in 2024,” Myra Puig said.
“Every Level 10 gymnast wants to make Nationals, and I didn’t expect her to make it at all. I told her just to have fun trying.”
Then, in 2018, Mia made the National B Team and “worked her butt off to make it up to the A team,” Myra Puig said. “She was ultimately chosen as an alternate for the A team and competed in Nationals in May. A week later, she got an invitation to attend the USA Gymnastics Camp in Indianapolis, so now she spends a week every month or so training there, in the same gym as her heroes, Simone Biles and Laurie Hernandez, train. It’s been an amazing experience.”
Mia attends virtual school from 8 to 10 a.m., then trains from 10 a.m to 1 p.m., has lunch, trains from 2 to 5 p.m. and then finishes school from 5 to 6:30 p.m. She and other gymnasts do their schoolwork in a classroom Myra Puig, a teacher by trade, set up in an upstairs room at the gym, where she acts as a multi-grade teacher to provide a more traditional classroom experience for the gymnasts.
“But again, this is all her,” Myra Puig emphasized. “As soon as she’s finished, we’re finished — and we’re coming home to the Keys. But until then, we’re behind her 100%.”
Follow Mia Puig on Instagram @miapuig2028
