Most sports have a unique apparatus that is used on an athlete's hand.

For example, baseball has its batting gloves, football has its receiving gloves, and gymnastics has its grips.

Grips help both male and female gymnasts to perform at their highest levels on certain events. They aid the Penn State women's gymnastics team in competing on the uneven bars.

"It enables them to do harder skills," Penn State women's gymnastics coach Steve Shephard said. "Some gymnasts don't even use grips, however, we prefer that they do use grips, especially as they get older. It saves wear and tear on their hands, it increases their ability to do more difficult skills, and it increases their ability to catch the bar when they do their release moves."

Since gymnast's hands are different dimensions, the grips are manufactured in a variety of sizes. This lightweight device is made of leather and contains Velcro or buckle straps to keep it fastened on the gymnast's wrist. Grips also have a little rod near the tip of the two finger holes for women gymnasts, three for men, called a dowel. The dowel aids the gymnast in gripping the slick bars and rotating more fluently.

"They give you a lot of confidence," Penn State women's gymnastics assistant coach Jessica Bastardi said. "They make it so that you can be more aggressive and know that you are going to be able to hang on and not peel off, as we call it, and get hurt."

However, while grips can aid gymnasts in their routines, they can also be dangerous.

"Grips can be your best friend, or your worst enemy," Shephard said. "Grips, when they are working right, help you hold on, but when the grip locks it can do what it did to Kelly [Streicher]'s wrist [broke it] and when it rips you can go flying off."

In fact, Shephard said that when he was a senior in college, the top all-around gymnast on his team had his grip break during a routine. The gymnast flew off the bar and broke his arm, which cost his team the championship.

Just as athletes establish rituals with gloves, gymnasts have rituals with the "glovey things" as assistant coach William Lorenz calls them. For example, senior Katie Rowland always adjusts both of her grips, then licks her thumb followed by her pinkie and mixes her saliva with the chalk on her grips to ensure a firm grip.

"All of the gymnasts have these little rituals with them," Bastardi said. "It is a comfort thing; you want them to feel good and feel right when you grip the bar."

Shephard requires each of his gymnasts to have two pairs of grips molded in case a pair rips. Since each grip is broken in by the gymnast using them, it makes it almost impossible to use another gymnast's grips.

Rowland discovered this last season when she forgot her grips when the team traveled to the Big Ten Championships at Ohio State. Luckily, Bastardi's husband Joe had not yet left Penn State, and Rowland had her boyfriend give Joe her grips to bring to the championships.

"I wouldn't be able to do bars without them," Rowland said. "I thought they were in my bag but they were still here, so when I got to Big Tens I was about to cry. I will never forget them again."