Helen Hu took a year off from gymnastics. Now, she’s a Mizzou national champion
It’s been two years since Helen Hu decided to walk away from the beam.
She finished the 2023 campaign with second-team All-America honors and a spot on the All-SEC Team. Plagued with back pain manifesting in a spondylolysis diagnosis — a type of stress fracture — a past ACL tear prior from the 2021 season and other feelings of burnout, the Mizzou gymnast was ready to put the days of competition behind her.
As ESPN’s D’Arcy Maine detailed, Hu set her sights on an 11-month backpacking trip with her older sister Elaine. The pair hit various stops across European, South American and Asian countries. Coming back to the U.S., she found a place in her hometown Chicago and planned to coach at her old gym, IK Gymnastics.
Indeed, two years ago, Helen Hu decided to walk away from the beam for good.
Or so she thought.
Mizzou coach Shannon Welker announced in early October that after Hu had taken a year off, she was returning to the team for the 2025 season, her final year of eligibility.
That decision started with a trip back to Columbia for former teammate Adalayna Hufendiek’s wedding. Hu tagged along for a summer training session and found herself back on the beam, Maine wrote.
“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I have more to give, and that belief that I could do more,” Hu said in an October news release.
The feeling and belief that brought her back to the sport she fell in love with all those years ago has resulted in a historic season for Mizzou gymnastics, led by the beloved beam specialist Hu.
Then, as if Thursday night couldn’t get any sweeter, Hu grabbed her own piece of history to claim an individual national title on the beam.
Is this what she would have imagined a year ago today?
“I think if I tried to tell year-ago Helen any of this, I wouldn’t believe myself,” Hu said Friday. “I really don’t know what I would even tell myself. I think that everything that happened was almost meant to be in its own weird way, and so I wouldn’t want to be told anything a year ago.
“I think everything in the way it happened was really just so unique and awesome. ... Like one big surprise.”
The No. 7-seeded Tigers, placing second in the NCAA semifinal with a score of 197.3000, advanced to the first NCAA final in the program’s history Thursday. It was Hu’s performance on the beam with a 9.9875 that clinched the spot in the Four on the Floor for the Tigers.
“I’d say it’s a shock because it’s so exciting that we did everything we did,” Hu said. “But in a lot of ways, it’s also not such a shock that we did it because I knew what this team was capable of, and that was a huge selling point in me coming back.”
There’s no doubt that Hu’s road to this point is rather unparalleled — going from a year off to a national championship. But as her return to the mat reminded, Hu is no ordinary gymnast.
Due to her back injury, Hu stuck with practicing on the beam, one of the conditions to her return as Maine detailed, as well as an agreement with Welker that she could continue coaching during the first semester before coming back to Columbia.
Upon her return, Hu was already reminding the Mizzou faithful of who she was early in the season. In a meet against the No. 1 Oklahoma Sooners, Hu landed the first 10 of the season on the beam. She went on to record the perfect score two more times this season, once against Arkansas and once in the NCAA Championship second round.
She became the first Mizzou gymnast to score three 10s in the same season in the same event, a feat highlighted by her second SEC Specialist of the Year honor (first in 2020).
“I’m so proud of what I did this season already,” Hu said. “I didn’t know if I would ever get a 10, and so to come here, having gotten three 10s, to be at nationals, there’s just so many things that exceeded my expectations.
“I honestly think I was up on that podium just giggling inside, like there were no words or coherent thoughts.”
A large part of what helped make her return so seamless? Her year away from the sport.
“I think having time away from gymnastics and from school and just really having no responsibilities for 11 months was so freeing,” Hu said. “I know that’s something that I’m so privileged that I got to do. And coming back from that, I felt like a new person.”
During her year off — amid the backpacking across the world — Hu took up a variety of different activities to stay in shape, from hiking and yoga to surfing.
“I felt really refreshed and really renewed,” Hu said. “And I still feel that way. I think that was something so crazy when I came back to Columbia and started training again. It was so familiar because I’m in the same places with a lot of the same people, but it felt so different because I felt so different.”
As the NCAA Championship Final wraps up Saturday, Hu will officially step away for good. She’s looking forward to going back to Chicago and working in a physical therapy internship while applying to physical therapy schools in the area.
“My hope is to become a physical therapist that helps athletes return to sports after injury as well as improve injury prevention in sports,” Hu told The Star.
Until then, though, there’s still some unfinished business awaiting Hu and the Tigers.
It’s been two years since she decided to walk away from the beam.
Now, she gets to call herself a national champion.
“I feel really, really lucky,” Hu said. “Even with all the hard work that I’ve put in — it’s sports, it’s life. You put in a certain amount of work, you don’t always get the result you put in work for. To see it come out every time this year, that I put in a certain amount of work and got the outcome I wanted … I just feel so lucky because not all athletes get that chance.”
The Tigers will take on No. 2 Oklahoma, No. 4 Utah and No. 5 UCLA in the NCAA Championship Final in Fort Worth. The title meet is slated for 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, on ABC.
