AUGUSTA — In the middle of a packed room at Decal Gymnastics, surrounded by loud, young gymnasts jumping from area to area, Mylee Grant stays calm and collected.
She breathes in, takes a moment, then starts a quick training routine on the uneven bars, pulling herself up on the first bar, before hopping onto the second, fully swinging around multiple times like a human pendulum. She then flips off, hitting multiple midair rotations before making a near-perfect landing on the crash mat.
The kids watching hope to one day enjoy the type of success Grant is having on both local and national levels.
Grant, a 17-year old from Thorndike, recently won the Senior B All-Around championship at the 2025 Women’s Development Program Level 10 National Championships on May 12 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She finished with an overall score of 38.750 (out of a possible 40).
“I knew I could place, but I did not know that I was going to get first (place),” Grant said. “The moment that I found out, I started crying and went, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this is real.'”
Level 10 is the highest level a gymnast can achieve in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympics Program. To compete at the Level 10 nationals, a gymnast has to finish among the top seven with their all-around score in the regional championships. At nationals, competitors are divided into divisions by age (Senior A, Senior B, Junior A, Junior B, etc.). By winning her senior division, Grant firmly established herself among the top high school gymnasts in the nation.
The championships are judged on four events: The uneven bars, vault, balance beam and floor routine. The highest a gymnast can score in each category is 10.0. Grant had scores of 9.4 or higher in each event, but excelled in the vault, where she scored a 9.85.
“I think, after (uneven) bars, I thought, ‘Possibly (I could win),'” Grant said. “Just stay on the (balance) beam, and you’re good. I’d say (I was proudest of my work) on beam, just because I stayed on the beam. In the vault, I completed a double full at nationals, and I was the only one to do that.”
Grant said she’s been training in the sport since she was a year old. She’s been working with her coach, Decal co-owner Delani Sher, for nearly 10 years.
“(I enjoy) the challenges and the rough days (of training),” Grant said. “I don’t like rough days, but it helps me get better.”
Added Sher: “She likes a challenge. We’ll throw some crazy, random idea out there, and she’ll do it. Her tough days usually involve how’s she going to get it… She had one of the hardest beam routines (at nationals). She has a lot of skills that makes her star value really high. We could have taken the hard routines out for nationals. She did a whole new floor routine at nationals. But she did it, not to play it safe, but to go and win.”
Sher said Grant started to stand out as a gymnast when she was 8 years old.
“We did this really hard strength (contest among the students),” Sher said. “Most of the kids were doing five to seven (repetitions). She whipped out 28.
“She’s been trying out a lot of different things (for events) and figuring out what works for Mylee. At nationals, somebody (asked), ‘Are you so shocked that you have a national champion?’ And I said, ‘No.’ We always knew that she was capable of it. On her best day, I don’t think anybody else stood a chance. I’m not trying to sound cocky when I say that, but we as a coaching staff, we knew that if she went out and didn’t worry about anything else, everyone else was going to have a really hard time beating her.”
Grant’s success hasn’t come without struggle. Two years ago, she was involved in a car accident with her father, Mike Grant, and suffered a concussion that kept her out of the gym for 10 weeks. Grant came back and finish seventh in the Junior E division at the 2024 Level 10 championships, with an overall score of 38.200.
“We had to start all over again (after the accident),” Grant said. “It was annoying (to do nothing for 10 weeks). No (injury) has knocked me out for that long.”
Grant and Sher sent emails to multiple Division I schools, and attracted the interest of the University of Kentucky. Grant, who is home schooled, committed to Kentucky on a full athletic scholarship in the fall and will compete for the program in 2026.
“I liked the coaches (Tim and Rachel Garrison) because they’re husband and wife, it makes it (a family atmosphere),” Grant said. “The team was really nice.”
Grant is not the only gymnast with Maine ties that has been recruited by a SEC school. Jasmine Cawley, originally from Limington and who began her career at the Maine Gymnastics Academy at age four, recently graduated from the Florida Virtual School and will compete for the University of Alabama in the fall. Cawley also competed at the Level 10 nationals, in the Senior D division. She finished third overall, with a score of 39.000
Grant is keeping her long-term options open, but is excited about her immediate future in the sport.
“I want to see where college takes me,” Grant said. “Maybe the Olympics (one day), I don’t know.”
