Some days, Avery Neff still can’t believe she’s a Red Rock.
Whether she’s competing under the bright lights of the Huntsman Center or sitting down for an interview to reflect on her freshman season, her radiant smile says it all: Neff is exactly where she was meant to be.
With eight national titles to her name, Neff was dubbed the top recruit for the class of 2024 by College Gym News — a distinction fitting for one of the sport’s fiercest competitors and, by her own admission, an intensely competitive person.
“If you know me, you know I’m one of the most competitive people you will ever meet,” Neff said. “It’s to a point where it’s kind of too much sometimes, but that’s just who I am … I get into this attack mode where it’s like, ‘I’m just going to absolutely annihilate anybody I can with my gymnastics.’”
There was a lot of anticipation surrounding Neff’s collegiate debut. But in just the third week of competition, she thought her season was already over.
Facing off against Iowa State at home, Neff suffered a scary fall during her final tumbling pass on floor that left her unable to walk off the competition floor on her own.
“I think that was a hard place for me to be at … me realizing my season probably is over and I didn’t know if I could redshirt. I didn’t know (anything),” Neff said. “You just have all these emotions going through your head. I don’t even know what to think. It was hard for me to fathom that it was over.”
Except it wasn’t.
With a little bit of fortune and a lot of determination, Neff was able to mount a remarkable comeback.
It was anything but easy — she had to relearn how to walk and couldn’t compete for several weeks — but she held onto the belief that it was possible.
“I’m the type of person where if there’s the slightest amount of chance that I could get it, I’m going to still try for that,” she said. “The brain is such a powerful tool. I was like, ‘If I can convince myself that it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad.’”
There was a simple motivator for Neff: wearing the team’s 50th anniversary leotard, which had each athlete’s last name written on the back.
“I had a hard couple of days in the gym, just trying to figure out what I was going to do or if I was going to come back or if I would even be healthy enough,” Neff said. “Carly (Dockendorf) pulled me aside and said, ‘Well you need to make a goal for yourself. What do you want to do?’ I told her, ‘Well we have a new leo and I want to wear it.’ She was like, ‘Perfect!’
“We have the 50 years leo and it has our names on the back. I saw it and was so excited to wear it because nobody puts their last names on a leo. So I thought, ‘I want to wear that leo but I wouldn’t be able to wear it,’ and she said, ‘Who’s stopping you? You can do bars.’ So I did it.”
Four weeks after being carried out of the arena thinking her season was over, Neff returned on the uneven bars. Three weeks after that, she was back in the all-around — and never looked back.
“My dad taught me from a young age that if you want something, you have to go get it … I had a little bit of drive that I could get back, so I (took it) and ran with it,” Neff said.
Neff capped off her freshman season as a four-time All-American — once with her team, earning Utah its first-ever Big 12 title, and once on beam — all while gaining even more determination for what lies ahead.
She’s not shy about her goals: Neff wants to win an NCAA title with her team. She’d love an individual all-around NCAA title (mostly for the ring to go along with her collection of awards), and she hopes to win the Honda Award before her time as a Red Rock is done.
While some might mistake her confidence for cockiness, Neff knows that success is built on hard work — and, perhaps most importantly, on believing in yourself.
“I think that’s one thing that has kind of changed with our team this year that Carly has told us,” Neff said. “They’ve said in the past they wanted a national championship, but they didn’t truly believe it … Carly was like, ‘This year you’ve been the one to be like, “No, we’re going to win the national championship.”’
“I’m very blunt with people. I’m going to tell them how it is, and I’m going to tell them my thoughts. And I want to win a national championship … I know there has to be so much work put into it, and I’ll put that work into it every single day.”