When you think of sports’ greatest leaders, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the ones who scored the most points, won the most awards and those who took charge in competition.

Although these leaders are given a well-deserved piece of the credit, there is always an unsung hero who keeps a team motivated and moving on track just by working hard and setting a great example.

For the ISU women’s gymnastics team, Laura-Kay Powell is all that and more.

Head coach K.J. Kindler and assistant coach Lou Ball said they look for several key characteristics when searching for new recruits, and Powell exemplified them all: She had a positive and humorous attitude, she was an incredibly hard worker and she had the ability and desire to come to college and improve. Today, Powell is one of the Cyclones’ main contributors, competing in the all-around and consistently placing in the top five individually on all events.

However, Kindler said she didn’t necessarily expect Powell to compete as an all-arounder during the recruiting process.

“She’s very talented and a very quick learner,” Kindler said. “Once we started working with her here, we quickly saw the potential and her true ability.”

Powell said the first thing she had to do when she arrived at Iowa State was to learn a new vault and beef up her difficulty on almost every event.

“I knew I should have been doing more; I just needed to get to it,” Powell said. “Since I’ve gotten here, my gymnastics has improved, and I’ve accomplished a lot, but there is still more I want to accomplish.”

Maybe it’s because the native Canadian spends each Christmas with her father’s family in his native Jamaica, or maybe it’s because she idolizes Bob Marley, but one thing is for certain — Powell’s laid-back demeanor has made an impact on her entire team.

“From a personality standpoint, she is the calm one. She never gets uptight or shows her nerves,” Kindler said.

In gymnastics, where the sport is just as much mental as it is physical, the ability to tumble on a four-inch-wide beam or grasp a two-inch bar is highly dependent on maintaining composure.

“She doesn’t make a big deal of little things,” Kindler said. “She has a great ability to set a bad moment aside and move forward with her life every day.”

As an all-around competitor, the team counts on Powell to post big scores on all events, and the team knows that if she does happen to make a mistake on one event, she will rebound and come through big on the next event, Kindler said.

“I feel like if you analyze things a lot, it will kind of mess with your head,” Powell said. “You need to stay calm, treat each meet like a new one and compete event-by-event.”

Team co-captain and fellow all-arounder Erin Dethloff said Powell’s positive and easygoing attitude is very contagious and motivating to the team, preventing others’ bad days from bringing the whole team down. Dethloff also said one of the biggest things that Powell brings to the team is a great sense of poise and style.

“What she does is very unique,” Dethloff said. “She has her own style that is very graceful.”

For many of those reasons, Kindler said, Powell has become a huge crowd favorite.

“When you think about the grace and beauty of the sport of gymnastics, Laura-Kay is that,” Kindler said. “It’s a pleasure to watch her perform, and when she is finished you think, ‘That was pretty, smooth … flawless.'”