- Avery Neff, a Red Rocks gymnast, focuses on personal growth this season.
- Neff balances team responsibilities while rediscovering her individuality and mental strength.
- Social media helps Neff express herself beyond gymnastics, grounding her identity.
SALT LAKE CITY — As a self-described "people pleaser," Avery Neff is learning to worry more about herself.
No, she's not turning on her team or making the gymnastics all about her — even as the current face of the Red Rocks — but she's moving a little more internal in how she approaches her gymnastics this season.
"I've been really focused on the team and what we can do as a team and how we can build each other as a team," Neff said. "I think sometimes this is when we just have to reflect on ourselves, and how can I make myself a better person in the gym, and how can I just better myself each and every day."
After a successful club career that propelled the former Bingham High student to be the No. 1 gymnastics recruit in the country, Neff had a lot of pressure on her shoulders to be everything for the Red Rocks her freshman season.
Her gymnastics were undeniably amazing, and she even weathered a serious ankle injury to compete with her team last season, but the second-year collegiate gymnast and now Red Rocks captain lost herself a little bit along the way.
That people pleaser side of her took over as she was consumed with being everything for anybody — all in the name of doing it for the team.
The Red Rocks needed her to be great as a freshman — she was — and to sort of level up her sophomore season, all with the added responsibility of being a team captain and having others rely on her for advice and direction.
It was and remains a positive experience for Neff, but she felt like she needed to find herself again to really be the most effective for the team. Some of her individuality, or the things that made her so successful as a club gymnast, were lost in the shuffle.
"I had so much success in my club career, and what made me so good then was I had such a strong mindset then as opposed to now," Neff said. "I think I've just been doing a lot of reflecting on things I did then; and I think that was mainly just — I wasn't worried about whether other people were thinking about me. I wasn't worried about the Twitter comments. I wasn't worried about all these things that I think I'm kind of thinking about now.
"I think when I came here, I felt like I had to be so much more, and I had to give so much more, but I already was doing enough," she added. "I think at one point I kind of lost myself, because I was just trying to give so much to other people, and I also needed to give to myself. So it's been a bit of a growth in just seeing what I can do to make myself happy in that sense."
But Neff wasn't alone.
Many other members of the Red Rocks were in a similar situation and "I think everybody's just finding who they are," Neff said. After a pair of sub-196 meets this season, several tough conversations were had and decisions made to help the team fight back to the Utah way of doing things as the only gymnastics program in the country to appear in every nationals.
Some of that change was that gymnasts needed to find themselves and not try to do things to please others — and that gymnastics itself doesn't solely define who they are as an individual. It's still a team effort, but it's one in which every gymnast has to remember who they are and what they can do individually.
"I just want to make everybody happy, but it's hard to make 16 girls on a team happy; and that's something that I'm having to learn, that I need to protect my peace too," Neff said. "Being in a captain role, it's not trying to make everybody happy. Sometimes there's hard things you have to say that people need to hear. And I think I'm just trying to get into that role that, like, it's OK to speak up.
"Because, ultimately, that's what makes the team. You need everybody's effort and you need everybody to be present and be able to speak their truth, because that's when we're going to grow the most," she added. "I think that's where I'm at, just trying to understand other people and myself, too. It's been a really good year for me just growing as a person."
Some of that even involves a change in how Neff approaches social media. In the day and age where everyone — gymnasts included — is expected to "brand," or market, themselves on social media, it's easy to get lost in the purpose of it all.
Athletes, most often, have to use social media to get the attention of coaches or fans, but it can also warp reality into painting an unrealistic picture.
It's for that reason that Neff has embraced using social media as a sort of journal and as a reminder of who she is beyond all the gymnastics.
"I'm doing it so that I can figure out who I am and look back on who I was," she said. "It's not really much a burden as it used to be, because I changed the aspect of this is who I am, and this is what I like to do.
"I think that's one way that I'm able to express myself is through social media, that what I believe in my religion, who my family and what my family looks like. It's not perfect. What my life looks like, it's not perfect, but I'm still showing what I do in my daily life. I'm probably weird. I'm probably a lot weirder than people think I am."
But it all grounds Neff and helps her remember who she is as an individual. And while life isn't perfect, even inside the sport she's wildly successful at, it's part of who she is and her value to the team.
"I think once we figure out that as a team, we're going to be unstoppable," she said.
