Wes Haagensen is on the vault runway, alone. He eyes his target for what seems like an eternity, finally raising an arm. He runs the entire distance of the path picking up speed and momentum until he reaches the vault and starts his skill for the event, a Tsukahara double full. The approach, rotation and landing are all outstanding, save a slight hitch in his landing.

So he takes another turn.

Again, Haagensen stares down his target, sprints down the runway, executing nearly flawlessly and lands his maneuver more cleanly this time, but still not to his liking.

Another turn.

Haagensen attempts it again, performing as well as he almost physically can, and tells himself, finally, that he needs to stop.

“I’ve always had a problem with taking too many turns and tearing my body up,” the senior from Belleville, Ill., said. “That’s the strive for perfection that I get most of the time where if it wasn’t perfect, I gotta do it again.”

While assistant coach and former All-American Justin Spring says that being in gymnastics requires a person to be a perfectionist by nature, it seems that Haagensen, Spring’s heir apparent, is taking it to a whole new level. Haagensen’s constant chase of perfection is one that has taken the gymnast’s daily routines in and outside of the gym to new heights. The most obvious of which is seeing him practice in the gym.

His desire for perfection paid off last season when he earned three All-American awards, Big Ten Champion in the all-around category and Big Ten Gymnast of the Year. With all of these goals being met, he could ease up on training, on practice and on things outside of the gym. But Haagensen’s goal of an NCAA championship has blinded him to anything that might detract from his final, unmet goal. In a sense, he doesn’t know any better.

“That’s just my nature, it’s how I was brought up,” Haagensen said about being a perfectionist and his competitive nature. “I try to push for my best ability, and if I’m not reaching it, I’m not going to be happy. I’ve always been taught the basic principle of if you’re going to do something, do it the best you can.”

But what does that mean? Language about being perfect and competitive gets thrown around by people – let alone athletes – daily. And at some point in life, it is likely most people would be described as a “perfectionist” in some aspect.

But for Haagensen, it is different. His personal struggle with perfection is one that is evident when witnessing him practice and performing at meets. That struggle starts outside of the gym with physically altering his lifestyle to prepare for meets and practices.

“I’m trying to get a daily routine where every week it’s kind of the same thing and not throwing my body outside of what it is used to,” he said. “I got into a really bad habit of napping and getting up and being groggy, so I’m really trying to cut that habit. I’m trying to get at least eight hours of sleep a night and trying to max that out at around nine hours.

“I’m talking to nutritionists, trying to be really careful of what I’m eating. I’m taking some supplements for muscle repair and for ligaments and joints so I’m not as sore. I’ve been measuring my hydration levels and making sure I’m not dehydrated. It’s a lot of those little things I’ve done. I’ve started to log my practices to see my progress and to see where I’m at.”

It’s not hard to comprehend his obsessive nature, considering that Haagensen is seen as one of, if not the most, competitive and focused members of the roster – a team that is full of overly competitive people, head coach Yoshi Hayasaki said. Still, Haagensen sticks out.

“I think that the best quality that he has is that he is very competitive,” Hayasaki said. “He’s dedicated to the sport, he lives for the sport. He has a very high desire to do well in this sport. When you have those three qualities, you vow to work very hard. But because of that, sometimes you can hurt yourself.”

As with all perfectionists, the intense desire to be perfect often drives them to do things that take away from training, not help it, such as Haagenesen does at times.

It’s hard for him to draw the line between perfectionism and overdoing things.

In the gym, Haagensen is now battling with that – trying to find where he needs to draw that line between turns that are helping him on the apparatuses and when he might just be breaking down his body more and more.

What’s working against him is his innate athletic ability. Because he is competing in all six events at meets, he has to practice all six. That is where intensity and perfection can exact a toll on his body.

“I have a certain intensity level that sometimes can get a little over the top,” Haagensen said. “It really helps out, but in gymnastics, I can get things a little carried away.”

His teammates have echoed his sentiments.

“He gets angry with anything that he doesn’t do perfectly,” senior Chris Silcox said. “That’s where his competitive nature comes from, wanting to be the best. Sometimes he’s really great, but that’s just not good enough for him. I wish he would be a little bit more positive about his own work. He’ll hit a routine that I could never do in the four years that I’ve been here and then just get pissed off about the little things. But that’s what makes him the best.”

“Like everyone will tell you, he is extremely competitive, which is great in the gym,” senior Michael Boyer said.

“He’s on a mission and works harder than anyone else. Even outside of the gym, any kind of competition whether it’s video games or just a simple argument, he’s out to win.”

Haagensen will be the first to admit that there have been some damaged video game controllers in his past, and that his nature does translate beyond the gym. But while he is usually the one who comes out on top, be it in school, the gym, or video games, there is one thing that his teammates have found he can be bested in.

“We’ve been bowling a few times and we give him a lot of crap because he isn’t a good bowler,” Silcox said. “He gets really mad if you beat him, and it’s the only thing we can beat him in, so we rub it in his face.”

He wouldn’t confirm or deny it, but there are rumors swirling around that Haagensen met his match in an 11-year-old one day at the alley.

The team helped the boy with his positioning in the lane and the young lad then was “bowling lights out.”

When he was discussing the incident Wednesday, his teammates pressed him on the issue, flustering the usually composed Haagensen about his lack of perfection with pins.

“Are you kidding me, I let that kid win,” Haagensen said in defense of himself.

“I really don’t have a whole lot to say about the bowling incident,” he said jokingly. “I’m not much of a bowler.”

And while his teammates may have found a chink in the armor, Haagensen can laugh off the short coming.

Because, after all, nobody’s perfect.