Scottsdale gymnast excited about competing for the University of Arizona

October 6, 2026

Originally published in The Jewish News HERE

Scottsdale native JJ Schibel, 18, a University of Arizona (U of A) freshman and a gymnast, loves spending time at Chabad House at the U of A in Tucson.

“It creates a sense of community,” Schibel said. “I know the girls on the gymnastics team and the other athletes I’ve met, but I haven’t met many Jewish first-year students who are athletes. Going to Chabad makes the school seem a little smaller because you have a tight-knit group of people.”

Although, she said she has connected with another first-year Jewish athlete at the U of A, freshman baseball player Ben Ball, from Chandler.

Schibel grew up attending Congregation Beth Israel in Scottsdale. Her parents are Isaac and Dana Schibel, and her father was a college athlete who played tennis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

She started gymnastics when her mother took her to “Mommy & Me” classes as a toddler. She picked up dance along the way but later chose to focus solely on gymnastics.

In 2022, she became a bat mitzvah in Israel, and during that trip she also competed in the Maccabiah Games, winning a silver medal with her team.

It was her second time in Israel, after visiting a couple of years earlier for the bat mitzvah of her older sister, Reese.

“Having my bat mitzvah in Israel was one of the best experiences,” Schibel said. “I enjoyed competing in the Maccabiah Games and would have gone back last summer, but I had to prepare for college. We met Jewish athletes from all over the world and learned a lot about the culture.”

While attending Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Schibel competed for Gold Medal Gymnastics in the East Valley, helping the club win a gold medal at the 2025 Arizona State Team Championships during her junior year. As a freshman, she competed in the 2023 Western Championships.

“We were all working together toward one goal,” Schibel said.

She recently joined Tribe NIL, a name, image, and likeness initiative and collective specifically for Jewish college athletes. She hopes to become more involved with the organization in the future.

She’s one of nine new faces, including six first-year students, on the Arizona Wildcats gymnastics team, known as the GymCats. She hopes to lead Arizona back to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships for the first time since 2002 — five years before she was born.

She said that she can see herself “competing in the floor exercise and, most likely, the beam.”

She chose the U of A because she believes the coaches truly care about each gymnast as a person and an athlete, and the atmosphere is one where everyone can thrive.

“The bond that we have within the gymnastics team is truly special,” Schibel said. “The second you become a member of the team, it feels like they’re your second family. I’ll be friends with these girls even after our college days.”