McKayla Rose Maroney

Early life
Maroney was born in Aliso Viejo, California, to Mike and Erin Maroney, on December 9, 1995. Her father was a quarterback at Purdue University, and her mother was involved in figure skating and high school sports. She is Irish-Catholic. She has two siblings, Tarynn and Kav, and was homeschooled in order to train as an elite gymnast.
"When I was younger," Maroney said, "I would be watching Tarzan and running around on all fours. My mom was like, 'I need to put this child in gymnastics. She's crazy.' I was technically in gymnastics at the age of 2 and always felt comfortable in the gym."
When Maroney was 9 years old, she started training at Gym-Max in Costa Mesa, California. In 2012 she said, "I realized that I had a dream that I wanted to go to the Olympics and I wanted to go as far as I could go. I thought I should probably move to a new gym and start thinking about the Olympics."