Johnson-Scharpf made the junior national gymnastics team in August in Indianapolis. With 10 months before the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she is a contender to become one of five gymnasts (plus up to three alternates) to qualify for the United States women's squad.
The degree of difficulty is escalated by a labyrinth of mental and physical challenges. Because the Olympics can be a five-ring circus of emotions, the process should come with a tour guide or, better yet, a mother's touch.
Both are within Johnson-Scharpf's reach.
"She knows everything," Johnson-Scharpf said. "She knows when I need (to be pushed) and when I don't. She just knows me the best, and that seems to have helped a lot."
In 1988, Brandy Johnson was a shining light on the U.S. gymnastics team at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Now she is coaching her daughter and serving as a living, breathing GPS for what could be the ride of a lifetime.
Olympic memory
Nearly three decades have not blurred Brandy's memory of being in Asia, seeing athletes whose posters she hung on her bedroom wall in Florida come alive. American flags were everywhere at the opening ceremonies.
She finished fifth in the vault, 10th in all-around and led the U.S. to a fourth-place team finish.
As a mother and coach, she naturally would like Sydney to experience the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with stepping onto the Olympic stage. More important, she is OK if she does not.
"This year is the one that you put everything out there," Brandy said. "You don't leave any regrets. You put your heart and your soul into it, and you make it? Fantastic. You put your heart and soul into it, and you don't make it? There's a reason. There's a plan. God has a plan for you.
"That's all you can do."
Sydney is doing everything she can.
She is in Brandy Johnson's Global Gymnastics Academy in Lake County for six hours a day, six days a week. For this 15-year-old honors student, her studies are important _ in the class and at practice, striving to fine-tune her skills for those days when the margin between success and failure can lurk behind a decimal point.
Brandy does not see in her daughter the second coming.
"She is nothing like me," said Brandy, 42. "She is her own self. She is not a junior. She is not anything. She is Sydney. I made that perfectly clear when she was in this sport, growing up.
"People have been really good with not comparing. They know the pressure is already there. She hasn't really felt that as much as she could."
Kelly Pitzen assists Brandy in coaching Sydney. She and Brandy trained together in Houston when they were younger. (Brandy trained, too, at the former Brown's Gymnastics in Altamonte Springs.)
"Sydney is always smiling," Pitzen said. "She just has a love for her life that comes out in everything she does. Brandy, from what I remember in the gym, may be a little more serious.
"Sydney is just like, 'Hey, you know what? I can do this. Here I am.' "
That smiling face obscures one of Sydney's most admirable traits. As much as she is a gymnast, she is a pretty good fighter, too.
Kidney issue
It started with an ultrasound, followed by a wife's frantic phone call to her husband, hysterical cries muffling her words.
A nurse detected something wrong with Brandy and Bill Scharpf's only child, but she wanted to wait for the doctor to identify the source of concern.
It took two days for the Scharpfs to receive an explanation.
"Forty-eight hours later, 48 hours of crying and not knowing," Bill Scharpf said. "That was really scary."
Their child had a condition called hydronephrosis, in which her left kidney was swollen because urine could not be disposed of properly because the ureter was too high. Sydney underwent surgery when she was three months old to move the ureter and shave the part of her kidney that was no longer functional.
Sydney battled kidney and bladder infections as a young child. She was on antibiotics for two years.
"My first few years, I was sick a lot," she said.
Once Sydney's health improved, other challenges arose.
Whether it was flipping on the balance beam, letting go of the uneven bars or committing to the vault fully, fear gripped Sydney as she advanced through the various levels of gymnastics.
"She really had one really big thing that she was afraid of every year," Brandy said.
Said Sydney: "Just believing that I could do it was big, and that was mostly what my fears were about. Once I got into this elite (gymnastics) world, I thought, 'I am good enough.' "
But could she compete at the meet where it would be decided whether she made the junior national team?
The day before nationals in Indianapolis, Sydney fell on the beam at practice. The 4-foot-9 , 86-pound girl sustained a severely swollen leg and strained an abdominal muscle.
"I am pretty sure I broke my toe," Sydney said.
After failing to qualify for the junior national team twice previously, Sydney's final chance was in jeopardy. She competed through the pain, finishing sixth and becoming the first Central Floridian to make the squad since Morgan Smith in 2009.
"Standing up on that podium, that was probably my best moment ever," said Sydney, who will enter gymnastics' senior ranks next year. "It was extreme excitement and sheer happiness."
Battered, bruised but not defeated. It was not the first time.
"Gymnastics, while a beautiful sport, is not without peril," said Phil Prescott, who taught Sydney biology last year at Montverde. "She would come into class banged up pretty good. I know she had to be hurting, and she always smiled.
"I could not hold her in higher affection."
Looking ahead
How high a regard the judges hold Sydney will determine whether she is destined for Rio.
"There are no false expectations," Brandy said.
The 2016 nationals will be held in June in St. Louis, and qualifying gymnasts will advance to the Olympic trials next July in San Jose, Calif.
Sydney is set to attend a national team camp Nov. 14 in Texas.
"Brandy has lived the whole, entire scenario," Rhonda Faehn, USA Gymnastics senior vice president of the women's program, said of her former Olympic teammate. "She knows exactly what her daughter is going through and what lies ahead.
"I am sure she is really making sure Sydney only focuses on the day right in front of her."
The Johnson-Scharpfs could make history if Sydney qualifies for Rio. Although its records are not complete, USA Gymnastics thinks they could become the first mother and daughter to represent the U.S. in gymnastics in the Olympics.
American gymnast Nastia Liukin captured the women's all-around gold medal in 2008 in Beijing, and her father, Valeri, won two golds for the Soviet Union in the Games in Seoul. Jana Bieger was an alternate on the 2008 U.S. squad, and her mother, Andrea, represented West Germany three times in the Olympics.
Sydney's reaction to the thought of joining her mother as an Olympian?
"That would be pretty cool."
The bull's-eye is out there, waiting for Sydney's best shot.
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