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Laurie Hernandez keeps insisting shes too young to know better. That shes so new to this whole Olympics thing, she doesnt know shes supposed to be scared.You just kind of have to act naive to it, the 16-year-old said with a shrug. Its just another meet. The arena is just a little bigger than usual.The stakes, too. Yet the youngest member of the powerhouse U.S. Olympic womens gymnastics team hardly seems intimidated. Hernandez is too busy putting on a show, her effortless charisma and dare you to look away performance during last weeks Olympic trials erased whatever doubt remained in national team coordinator Martha Karolyis mind about Hernandezs ability to handle the big stage.If anything, Hernandez is trying to own it. Ask her what she considers her biggest talent and she doesnt point to any particular physical attribute but something decidedly more abstract.Im confident, she said. Im a crowd pleaser.It shows, particularly when Hernandezs floor music starts. What follows is 90 seconds of attitude and athleticism. Hernandez doesnt dance so much as strut, every move joined by an electric smile that doesnt seem plastered in place but an organic byproduct of the joy shes feeling. Shes having a good time out there. And she wants you to notice.Hernandez describes her gymnastics as sassy but thats underplaying it. Her tumbling is on par with anyone on the planet not named Simone Biles -- the three-time world champion who is the heavy favorite to come back from Rio with a luggage full of gold medals -- and her steady, detailed work on balance beam the result of thousands of hours spent with longtime coach Maggie Haney trying to get over a small bit of stage fright.No, really.Hernandez admits there was a time early on she was scared of the beam. When she hopped on shed settle into a squat because she couldnt summon the courage to stand. Haney didnt baby Hernandez to get her going. If anything, Haney went the other way, putting Hernandez through countless pressure sets designed to force Hernandez into a choice: get mentally tough or find something else to do with your free time.Sometimes Haney would play Hernandez and teammate Jazmyn Foberg against each other, the difficulty of Fobergs next routine based on the quality of Hernandezs. The worst for Hernandez, however, is when Haney would tell all the kids in the gym to stop working and gather around the beam, while her star student tried to hold it together in the stillness.I was like, `Why are you doing this to me? Its so annoying, youre really really making me anxious, said Hernandez, who easily posted the top score on beam at the trials. But then I look back and I can only thank her for that because its made me so calm today.A place that slowly came into focus over the last four years as Hernandez learned to harness her considerable talents. She rose from 21st in junior nationals in 2012 to junior champion last summer despite wrist and knee injuries that sidelined her for most of 2014. When a knee sprain threatened to derail Hernandezs momentum this year, Haney offered a very brief, very pointed pep talk.I looked at her, `It is time. Now, Haney said. She snapped and went into kind of crazy ... mode. Every practice, every time on the floor was important to her.The eye-opener came at the Pacific Rim Championships in April, when she came in third behind Biles and three-time Olympic medalist Aly Raisman. It wasnt just the praise from Karolyi that she noticed -- it was the way people seemed to respond to her.You hear cheering and clapping and youre thinking `I dont even know these people, she said. It brings a lot of energy, a lot of positive energy.Energy that practically radiates off Hernandez, the youngest of Wanda and Marcus Hernandezs three children. A second-generation Puerto Rican, Hernandez is proud of her heritage and aware shes suddenly become a role model, even if she doesnt quite consider herself one.I think people are people, she said. If you want something, go get it. I dont think it matters what race you are.Hernandez considers herself a gymnast above all else. Sure that smile makes it look easy, but its also hard earned from years and years of falling and picking herself back up. Dont let her playful demeanor fool you; she may be the bubbliest workaholic around. Shes home-schooled and spends most days working out with Haney at one of the two gyms near her home in Old Bridge, New Jersey, about an hour south of New York City. Pressed if she has friends outside the gym, she laughs and says not really.Thats changing by the day. Biles considers her a little sister. Twitter verified her account ((at)lzhernandez02) after the trials. The mayor of Old Bridge threw a party for her this week. Everyone is looking to come up with a good nickname. The leaders are The Human Emoji and Baby Shakira. She cant help but laugh at the idea while simultaneously trying not to get ahead of herself.As for college, she has verbally committed to competing at Florida whenever shes out of high school (she still has at least two years left). She downplayed the idea of turning professional even as NBC cameras tripped over themselves following her every move at the trials. Hernandez wont decide until after Rio so there wont be any distractions.Its all happening really fast, she said. This is a really cool part of my life.One getting cooler by the day. Cheap Jordans . -- Brandon Jennings made the most of his first game with the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night. Cheap Air Jordan 11 Fast Shipping . Vettel was 0.168 seconds faster than Red Bull teammate Mark Webber around the Suzuka circuit. Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was two tenths of a second off Vettel. "The car balance is decent, but I think we can still improve," Vettel said. http://www.outletairjordan11.com/ . By having more great seasons. Manning was the only unanimous choice for the 2013 Associated Press NFL All-Pro team Friday. Jordans Outlet . Both players have lower body injuries that will keep them out of the lineup until at least January 31, which is the first game they can be activated from IR. Cheap Air Jordan 11 . Soukalova missed only one target and completed the 15-kilometre course in 40 minutes, 32.6 seconds for both victories in this seasons individual discipline. Darya Domracheva of Belarus was second, 34. It wasnt merely short; it was divinely concise. It wasnt merely sweet; it was heart-wrenchingly sincere. It was Andre Agassis farewell speech, delivered on the floor of Arthur Ashe Stadium a decade ago at the US Open.Few speeches had ever had to satisfy so intense a build-up. Over 23,000 spectators had stood showering Agassi with applause and cheers for more than four minutes before he even stepped out to address them. They stood clapping and cheering, whistling and crying out, some with tears welling in their eyes.Taking it all in, Agassi felt that he finally understood what tennis meant in his life and what he had meant in the lives of tennis fans.It was my greatest moment on a tennis court, Agassi recently told ESPN.com. And I mean it every bit the way anyone would hear or read that statement.A decade later, the extraordinary scene that unfolded on the floor of Ashe that Sept. 3 afternoon after Agassi lost in the third-round of the 2006 US Open resonates with even greater meaning. It echoes like a fitting eulogy for perhaps the greatest generation of male tennis players ever produced in the U.S., the generation that included fellow Grand Slam champions Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang.This is also the 10th anniversary of the last American males appearance in a US Open final. One week after No. 112 Benjamin Becker of Germany stopped Agassi, Andy Roddick lost the championship match to Roger Federer.I guess you could call it irony, Agassi said. Or is it tragedy?At the time, Agassi could not know what lean times lay ahead for the domestic game. Besides, he was too worried about his own failing condition.Agassi was ranked No. 7 at the outset of 2006, but over the course of the year an ankle gave out, and his back threatened to follow. By the US Open, he was living in a cocoon of pain and looking hard at life after tennis. In his own mind, he thought of that portion -- two-thirds of his life, with any luck -- as, simply, the abyss. He would have to go into it soon, but he wasnt going without a fight.In his first match in Flushing Meadows, Agassi got by Andrei Pavel in four sets. Then he survived a five-set match with Marcos Baghdatis, mounting a spectacular rally after dropping the third and fourth sets. But Agassi was cooked. The ensuing day off still had too few hours. Agassi played a respectable match against Becker, but he was heavy-legged, dull at the edges. He lost in four sets.Agassi knew as he walked off the court that it was time to say farewell. He had no script, but he had been thinking about this moment, and what he might say when it arrived, for months. He knew what he valued.My jouurney was less linear, more complex, less honest than most, he said.dddddddddddd But I knew what this game and people have meant to me, and why I had gotten through so many difficulties and achieved so much despite all else. Thats why feeling connected, and communicating the value of that feeling, seemed so important.After Becker ended Agassis career with an ace down the middle, the loser sat with his face buried in a brilliant white towel. The standing ovation raged around and above him as he tried to compose his thoughts and control his emotions. At one point, he buried his face in his hands, and as the tears streamed down his face he tried wiping them away with the heels of his palms.Mary Joe Fernandez interviewed Becker briefly, finally quieting the crowd. Agassi then walked out on the court and took the microphone from Fernandez. He scratched the back of his head, looked up, and spoke these words:The scoreboard said I lost today. But what the scoreboard doesnt say is what it is I have found. Over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments.And Ive found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on, to reach for my dreams, dreams I could never have reached without you. Over the last 21 years, I have found you, and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life.The speech lasted exactly 50 seconds. Agassi made it through nearly 40 of them before his voice showed any sign of wavering or cracking. Finished, he walked to his chair like a man who had just had a thousand-pound weight lifted off his shoulders. He packed his tennis bag, but he was no longer apprehensive about his destination. He was no longer feeling uneasy about the abyss.As he walked away, Agassi knew that he wasnt saying goodbye to the game as much as to a lot of people with whom he had been on a long and exciting journey. There would be another journey, and it too would be about people, about connections. The things that count.Its a bit of death of sorts, Agassi said of retiring. Youre crossing over into a different world. You can never know what to expect, what it looks like. And you dont know how you feel about it until after that day comes.Agassis day came, and afterward he felt pretty good about it. When he looked into the abyss, he found it filled with light and the love of 23,000 fans in Ashe and millions more who watched that day. ' ' '