PHOENIX — Reese Esponda pulls a small, light blue box out of her gymnastics bag before every competition. It’s a ritual she has done time and time again. The 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Phoenix are no different.

“It’s my fairy box,” Esponda said on Wednesday, Aug. 5, before nationals kicked off. “As I got older, (my grandma) started telling me the fairies are going to be with you at competitions.”

The whimsical box is filled with everything from fairy dust glitter to vintage charms and special trinkets that her grandmother, Anita Moon, gathered to bring her luck and a little bit of magic at meets. “Believe in the fairies who make wishes come true,” reads a Tinkerbell-adorned card neatly tucked in the box.

“It calms me down for some reason. It’s a big superstition that I have,” Esponda added. 

The up-and-coming gymnast has another fairy godmother in her corner: Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. Ahead of last month’s 2026 U.S Classic, where Esponda “surprised” herself and won the first all-around title of her elite career, the 17-year-old received a text from Biles.

“(Biles) said, ‘Good luck at Classics, babe. Just believe in yourself. Use your power as an advantage. Controlled power is everything,” Esponda said, reading the message directly from her phone. “It’s crazy. I never thought that would happen. I have a picture of us from seven years ago when I was training at WCC at a camp.”

The snapshot from June 2019 is forever memorialized on Esponda’s Instagram, as are photos of a young Esponda posing next to life-sized cardboard cutouts of Biles. But Esponda is now rubbing elbows with Biles herself. 

The Montana native moved in the spring of 2024 to train at the World Champions Centre (WCC), an elite gymnastics facility in Spring, Texas that Biles and Jordan Chiles call home. Biles even dropped by the gym ahead of nationals just to say hi, Esponda recalled with a smile.

“(Biles) is kind of similar to me in tumbling and vault and stuff,” Esponda added. “So just knowing that she knows how to do that, she’s told me multiple times how to control my power.”

Her power was on full display during Day 1 of the U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Friday. Esponda earned the highest mark of the night on floor (14.45) in a star-studded field that included Olympic champions Hezly Rivera and Jade Carey, in addition two-time world champion Skye Blakely.

Esponda is in sixth place (54.1) heading into Day 2 on Sunday, Aug. 9. Blakely and Claire Pease are tied for first place (55.6), followed by Charleigh Bullock (55.4) third, Rivera (55.0) fourth and Carey (54.4) fifth.

Resse Esponda’s move to WCC paid off

Esponda was three when Gabby Douglas won all-around gold at the 2012 Olympics. Esponda was so inspired that she started “doing headstands watching her.” Her own gymnastics journey began soon after in Helena, Montana. But by age 15, Esponda felt something was missing from her training. She wasn’t unlocking her full potential.

So Esponda and her mother, Lindsay, traveled more than 1,500 miles to Spring, Texas, to lay down roots at one of the best elite training facilities in the world in 2024. Esponda initially began training with Biles’ Olympic coaches Cécile Canqueteau-Landi and Laurent Landi at WCC, but the husband-and-wife duo left after Paris because Canqueteau-Landi had been named co-head coach at the University of Georgia.

Esponda then began training with Patrick Kiens and Daymon Jones, a shakeup she called “a blessing in disguise.”

“It’s definitely been a big change,” Esponda said. “I love them as coaches. They’ve been really helpful. And also just having teammates that kind of know what I’m going through has been really helpful.”

Jones told USA TODAY Sports that he and Kiens prioritized getting Esponda in elite shape as her initial transition to elite training frequently resulted in injury.

“She was not really in a high performance environment and that’s why she moved to Texas,” Jones said. “And I think that when she arrived training with the other coaches, she got injured because she was really going from junior gymnastics to senior gymnastics.”

Jones added that chalking up next to Biles reinforces “big gymnastics is normal.” He said, “It’s normal that you’re doing a double, double on floor, because Simone (Biles), is doing a triple double. So I think that also helps Reese really come in her own with high-level gymnastics when it comes to some of the events like floor.”

Resse Esponda’s long-term goal: ‘LA28’

After her 2026 U.S Classic all-around win, Daymon Jones noticed Esponda came to practice a little weary.

“She was doing a lot of press after training until late in the evening. And she came in a couple mornings kind of tired. We’re like, ‘What’s going on?’” Jones told USA TODAY Sports. “So we said… after the competition, you can do all the media you want, but first let’s focus on who’s doing the gymnastics.”

Focusing on the day-to-day grind has helped Esponda stay grounded in the present moment as pressure and expectations from herself and the outside world grow alongside her results.

“I think (winning Classics) could give me a little bit more pressure, but I’m trying to turn the pressure into confidence and just do what I do in practice every day. And that’s been working for me,” added Esponda, who engages in positive self talk as she competes. “I see some things online that put more pressure (on me), and then also just in my head, I want to do the same as I did last competition.”

That pressure will only increase with the LA28 Games in sight. Esponda has set ambitious short-term and long-term goals for herself: She wants to make the team for the 2026 World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands in October and ultimately land a coveted spot on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics team.

“To medal on floor at Worlds, if I make it,” Esponda added. “It would mean a lot to me. I think I can do it.” 

Jones said making the five-woman Worlds team would help her “readiness to compete at the highest level at the Olympic Games.”

“It’d be really nice for her as well to have that experience because she’s doing this for LA. She wants to go to LA,” Jones added. “So once you’ve done a world championships or two, that really helps your confidence… So that would be really, really good for her to be on that team. I think that she can really help the team a lot. She’s stable in competition. She’s confident, she’s cool, and she’s got high level of gymnastics. And I think that what she has, I think the team could really use.”

Reach USA TODAY National Women’s Sports Reporter Cydney Henderson at chenderson@gannett.com and follow her on X at@CydHenderson.

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