NEW ORLEANS — Hezly Rivera was the fresh face a year ago. The newcomer. The teenager on a team of 20-something Olympic gymnasts, doing her best to absorb what she could from Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles.The one thing that stood out, even more than the sometimes otherworldly gymnastics, is the way her fellow gold-medal-winning teammates went about their business. “They looked so confident,” Rivera said. “They’re like, ‘I’m going to go out and I’m going to hit.’ It gave me that confidence as well.”Looks like it.The now 17-year-old who says she’s paying no attention to the idea that she’s the leader of the women’s program in the early stages of the run-up to the 2028 Olympics certainly looks the part.Buoyed by a polished steadiness — and a beam routine that finally looked the way it does back home at her home gym in Texas — Rivera captured her first national title Sunday night at the U.S. Championships. Her two-day total of 112.000 was good enough to fend off a challenge from Leanne Wong and put her in excellent position to lead the four-woman American delegation at the world championships in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October.Rivera, by far the youngest member of the five-woman team that finished atop the podium in Paris a year ago, bounced back from a shaky performance at the U.S. Classic last month with the kind of measured, refined gymnastics that she attributed to simply “letting go” of whatever …
