Are the Olympics the future for Grace McCallum, Amelie Morgan or Kara Eaker?

FORT WORTH, Texas — It is a question that Grace McCallum has heard before. Many times now.

Will she leave college gymnastics and the University of Utah, even just temporarily, and attempt to make the U.S. Olympic team and compete at the Paris Games in 2024?

Standing on the floor of Dickies Arena following the 2023 NCAA women’s gymnastics championship, McCallum was frank.

She hasn’t decided yet, though she knows the deadline is coming up. And quickly.

“I am still thinking about it, but I am leaning towards more college,” McCallum said. “Just because I love it here (at Utah) so much. I have never felt so much support from a gymnastics community. And I have just been having so much fun with it.

“I mean, I love elite too, but college is a completely different feeling, so less stressful.”

McCallum’s teammates at the Tokyo Games — Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey, plus alternate Leanne Wong — have all announced their intentions to try and qualify for Paris, and she freely admits that she has felt pressured because of it.

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“It is a touchy subject and it is hard because all my teammates from the Olympics are going back,” she said. “It is kind of hard, because I feel like I have to, just because they are, but I don’t want to feel like I have to just because they are.”

Her teammates at Utah have on occasion asked her about her plans for the future, not to an excessive degree, though, much to her relief.

“We kind of each have our own things,” she said. “They will ask every once in a while what I am planning on doing, but they are pretty respectful of boundaries and don’t neg at it too much.”

The deadline for a final decision for McCallum is the end of this summer. Training for the Olympics is no easy task and requires a significant commitment.

So even though she may be leaning towards staying at Utah and continuing her collegiate career, nothing is set in stone just yet.

“It isn’t out of the question,” she said. “I think about it all the time, whether or not I want to go back. This decision is a literally killing me. We will see. ... I am going to have to make it by the end of the summer.”

McCallum isn’t the only Olympic medalist on Utah’s roster.

Amelie Morgan won bronze for Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics and she too could attempt to qualify for the Paris Games.

Much like McCallum, she hasn’t completely shut the door on such a future, but it isn’t her expectation.

Almost at all.

“I think for me, that probably won’t happen,” Morgan told the Deseret News two weeks ago. “It is not set in stone. I could go back if I want to. There is no rule saying I couldn’t. At the same time, I feel fulfilled in my elite career. I feel like I did everything I possible could. I made it the Olympics and medaled. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

She added: “For me, I don’t have a massive desire to go back. But you never know what can happen. I am really enjoying my time here at Utah.”

Kara Eaker, another Utah gymnast, was an alternate for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics, though her Olympic experience largely consisted of sitting in a hotel room while being quarantined due to COVID.

Regularly described as one of the best beam workers in the world during her elite career, Eaker could follow Wong’s lead — they were teammates at Great American Gymnastics Express prior to college — and attempt to make it to Paris, but she won’t.

Her elite career is almost definitively over.

“I think I have moved on from that chapter,” Eaker said. “I am really focusing on school right now. I am starting to come to more of a clarifying idea of what I want to do after college. It sounds kind of off in some places, I haven’t put together the whole plan, but I am starting to decide on a specific job, or specific emphasis within my major.

“I really want to push that more than the gymnastics.”

The Paris Olympics are the target of multiple high profile college gymnasts — the aforementioned Lee, Chiles, Carey and Wong — but for now, the University of Utah’s Olympians are mostly contented with life in Salt Lake City and their position as Red Rocks.