Alina Weinstein is lying on an enormous blue mat in the middle of Huff Hall at Saturday’s Pink Meet. With one leg under her body, one leg extended behind her and her torso pressed to the mat, the music starts and she slowly rises. Weinstein raises a hand to the sky, walks to the far corner of the mat and turns, pointing to the crowd. A few more hand motions, a two-footed jump, and she’s off running diagonally across the mat.

Out of nowhere, she begins to flip through the air, a round off turns to two back handsprings that lead to two rotations in the air with a turn. On the final part of her pass, she takes off for the double rotation and turns with such velocity that she’s still ascending into the air when she begins the second rotation. Weinstein floats through the air as gracefully as a hummingbird before returning to the mat.

The crowd goes crazy. She sticks it perfectly and begins to dance back across the mat, looking at the crowd as she preforms each move, making sure everyone in Huff Hall is dancing with her. She finishes her routine with a tumbling pass in which she does another double back flip, before dramatically falling to the mat, a move that gets an even bigger response from the crowd.

On the day, Weinstein will set a season high in the all-around and come close to one in the floor competition. She will win two individual event titles. 

But winning is nothing new for her. Over the course of her career, the senior has racked up 19 individual event titles, an NCAA regional all-around and beam title, and numerous other honors. But there is more to Weinstein than just her gymnastics. She is also a team leader, a motivator, a bright student and at the end of the day, a performer.

“When I do gymnastics, I want to be just like her,” sophomore Sunny Kato said. “She’s also a great leader, and someone the team looks up to.”

Weinstein says she loves to preform, and in this sport, she has found her outlet, which is why after graduation she hopes to join Cirque du Soleil and travel the world.

But after a two-year stint with Cirque, Weinstein says she wants to get a real job.

From couches to the floor

Weinstein has been performing all her life. She comes from an athletic family in which her dad played basketball in Russia, and her sister, Lili, swam collegiately at Brandeis University before becoming a doctor.

Weinstein’s love of gymnastics began before her fifth birthday — the year she started her first gymnastics class — when she would jump around in the house and scare her mother half to death in the process.

“I was really active as a kid,” Weinstein said. “My mom was worried that I was going to break my neck in the house because I kept using the couches and all the furniture in the living room as gymnastics apparatuses, so my mom thought it was time to put me in a structured gymnastics program.”

She excelled in the gym from the first day, and her coaches noticed her talent early on.

“When I was in elementary school, I think the first class that I took, I impressed my coaches a lot, and so they were like, ‘Oh, you have to put her on the team,’ so my mom did what she was told and put me on the team.”

She’s been competing ever since. From her first handstand or cartwheel — Weinstein can’t remember which of the two she learned first — she grew into an extremely competitive, busy middle school gymnast.

Weinstein says she always attended school with her peers, but with all the training she did, she had to complete a class, during lunch, that she missed each day.

“I trained twice a day, and it got a little hectic,” Weinstein said. “I was an international elite for a couple years, and I loved it. I thought it was great. I really tried to see if I could take that somewhere, but then I got a concussion in February when I was 14.”

The concussion didn’t slow down Weinstein, as she got right back into gymnastics by competing in USA Gymnastics’ Junior Olympic Program.

“Ever since then I competed at Junior Olympic, and I thought it was awesome. I had a lot time for gymnastics, and school and to have a decent social life, so it ended up working out really well.”

In high school, Weinstein won multiple regional championships for Junior Olympic and competed for Arena Gymnastics, an area club team, before Illinois women’s gymnastics head coach Kim Landrus noticed her talent.

“I don’t do this for myself”

After choosing Illinois because of the school’s top-notch academics and gymnastics team on the rise, Weinstein had some setbacks early.

“I think freshman year was definitely an adjusting year for me,” Weinstein said. “It was hard, it was a new experience and one I had to adjust to.” 

Weinstein got her break when an injury to Melissa Fernandez opened a spot for her to compete as a vaulter, and she made the most of her opportunity.

In her sophomore season, Weinstein earned second-team All-America honors on floor after tying for eighth at the NCAA Championships. Weinstein also finished the season having hit 47 of 52 routines, having won the Illini’s Most Improved Gymnast award with her first three individual event titles. She was also named an academic All-Big Ten selection. But most importantly, she hit on all four events at the NCAA Regional, helping the program to its second NCAA nationals bid.

“It’s awesome to be looked at as a consistent performer,” Weinstein said. “Above all, I think gymnastics is looked at as a very precise sport, so it was really nice for me to be the leadoff. In gymnastics, the first spot is an extremely well-respected spot because you have to be consistent, and you set the tone for the rest of the lineup. … I feel I thrive under pressure, so just knowing that my team was depending on me drove me to do well.”

From there, it was on to junior year when Weinstein won 14 individual event titles, as well as two NCAA Regional titles. Weinstein then advanced to the NCAA Championships, the 10th Illini women’s gymnast ever to do so. But she felt out of place without her team.

“Honestly, I’m a team player and I want more than anything for my team to be Big Ten champions and end up back at nationals, and so that’s really all I thought about while I was there,” she said. “It was great to have done so well, but I don’t do this for myself anymore.”

This season, she has been on a mission, with three individual event wins and nine top-five finishes in individual events.

Weinstein doesn’t care about titles or high scores, though. Instead, she only cares about the team.

“She is a very vocal person,” Landrus said. “She is constantly encouraging and pushing her teammates. Alina is constantly trying to help everyone reach their potential anyway she can. She sets an example and tries to help lead them in the right direction each and every day.”

After this season, those that support her at Huff Hall could be in the stands of a Cirque du Soleil performance.

“I think that would be awesome for her to do Cirque du Soleil,” Kato said. “It’s a great opportunity and it seems like a lot of fun. I just hope I get the chance to watch her one day.”

Nicholas can be reached at goldwyn2 @dailyillini.com and        @IlliniSportsGuy.