Utah gymnastics: Jaedyn Rucker’s comeback is complete

It was the final rotation of the Salt Lake City regional finals, and Utah was wavering.

By that point in the competition, the Red Rocks had dominated the Maverik Center, building a seemingly insurmountable lead over LSU, ASU, and Kentucky, but consecutive sub-par vaults had put Utah at risk of not qualifying for Nationals.

This is where Jaedyn Rucker came in. With the pressure mounting, Rucker nailed her vault with a stuck landing and all, earning a career high of 9,950.

Utah Utes gymnast Jaedyn Rucker and her team react after their jump during the NCAA regional finals at the Maverik Center on Saturday, April 3, 2021. The Utes advance to the next round. Annie Barker, Deseret News

The response was instant. Her teammates stormed out of Utah’s stable to celebrate, jumped in the air and sprinted down the runway before hugs and high fives were given to anyone at arm’s length.

Part of that response was due to Rucker stopping the bleeding and making Utah citizenship for the 45th consecutive year. Not everything, but not even most of it.

The celebration and excitement that followed Rucker’s vault had everything to do with her and her comeback.

“I don’t know if you will come back from this.”

A week before her high school season started in February 2019, Rucker ripped open her ACL.

It was the first serious injury in her gymnastics career, and a devastating one as she signed with Utah in November 2018, hoping for a smooth transition from club gym to college gymnastics.

“The timing wasn’t good,” said Rucker.

She had to undergo surgery in February to repair her ACL. She wasted little time competing for Utah as quickly as possible. The typical recovery time after ACL surgery is around six to eight months. So in a perfect world, Rucker would have been physically restored at least 100% by October 2019 at the latest, a few months before the start of the 2019-20 season.

“Obviously we’re incredibly proud of (Jaedyn) and her sheer determination to get to this point. She is critical. She was a key component and is someone who, at her optimal level, has the streaks to compete at the back end of the line-up on an elite team. For her, this is what we envisioned to come back and be in the position she is in, to be the contributor that she is. “- Utah’s trainer Tom Farden

However, things did not go as planned. Rehab didn’t produce the desired result, and Rucker “didn’t come close to 100% to Utah.” Even so, she was not discouraged by the university’s reputation.

“I knew that I would be in a better position than me (at home) because of the program and the things that are on offer,” she said. “I wasn’t really stressed.”

Upon arrival, however, Utah’s coaching and training staff quickly realized that something was wrong with Rucker’s knee.

“We knew we had to take a second look,” said Utah assistant coach Garrett Griffeth.

That second look revealed that Rucker had a cyclopean lesion, a collection of scar tissue on the knee, a rare complication that can occur after ACL surgery. The lesion prevented her from fully extending or bending her knee, not to mention the pain, and her inability to use her knee caused the muscles in her leg to atrophy.

The only solution was another operation that nobody wanted.

“Every time you have two (surgeries) on the same knee, it’s a big deal,” said Utah head coach Tom Farden.

At that time, doubts crept in for Rucker. She always wanted to be a college gymnast, but that dream seemed further away than ever.

“A lot of people around me are starting to doubt because it was so long ago,” said Rucker. “You said things like, ‘I don’t know if you are able (to compete)’ or ‘I don’t know if you can’ will come back from that. ‘I even started thinking,’ I’m really not going to recover ? ‘”

“If you tell me that I can’t do something, I’ll do it.”

Luckily for Rucker, she can’t say no very well. This trait is one of the reasons Farden recruited her.

“A lot of people have a chip on their shoulder, but I’m looking for the big chip,” said Farden. “I’m looking for those who want to prove something and she has found me to be someone like that.”

It took Griffeth very little time to come to a similar conclusion.

“Jaedyn has a huge chip on his shoulder,” he said. “When she’s told there is something she couldn’t do, like she might not deny this vault anymore, I think she’s trying to prove the opposite to people.”

She quickly found a way to dispel the doubt Rucker spoke of.

“I learned to use that (doubt) and channel it into something positive,” she said. “I used that as my motivation, my why. I love proving people wrong. If you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll do it. I’ll prove you wrong. “

This mentality proved critical to Rucker’s recovery. After her second operation, she had to start the entire rehab process from the beginning. To say it was difficult is an understatement.

“I couldn’t do much in the gym, just basic things like kicks or cartwheels,” she said. “I had pretty big problems, but then I said to myself, ‘You know what you’re doing, you can come back from it. ‘There were a lot of people around me who started to doubt, but that kind of hit a switch in my head and I said, “I’m not going to let anyone tell me I can’t do something when I know I can do it. ” ”

Before the pandemic, Rucker had started rebuilding the foundations of her gymnastics. Last spring, when her teammates were busy battling for a national title contender, she had started training in loose foam and attempting soft landings.

“We’ve been doing these things for a long time,” said Griffeth.

When the season abruptly ended, Rucker returned to Mesa, Arizona and wasted no time getting to work.

“I used the time to work out with my old coaches in my old gym,” she said. “You probably know me better than I do, and I took advantage of that.”

When she returned to Utah in August, Rucker was a changed person. Not because she was ready to compete – she wasn’t – but because she was on the trail for the first time in over a year.

“When I came back, all of my teammates and coaches described me as a completely different person,” said Rucker. “I was finally where I wanted to be. I was happy, I was motivated, and I was excited. I’ve always wanted to do college gymnastics. That’s what every gymnast works for his entire career and I said, “It’s finally my time.”

“Am I kicking?”

Much of the recovery from a serious injury is mental, and while Rucker was almost 100% physically ready to compete when she returned to Salt Lake City in the fall, she wasn’t quite mentally there.

So Farden, Griffeth – Utah’s vault coach – and volunteer assistant coach Courtney McCool Griffeth – Utah’s floor coach – set out to rebuild their confidence.

“This year was about getting them confident and getting them back,” said Griffeth. “Build that up and then really continue for the next year.”

During the preseason, McCool-Griffeth helped Rucker learn and implement a new fall pass that is “a little bit safer and that she can see visually,” Farden said.

And on the vault, Griffeth Rucker let the easier Yurchenko fully train instead of the more difficult Yurchenko 1.5, which she had contested at the Olympic junior level.

“She was on the way with the operations for almost two years. She was a newcomer to the competition because she hadn’t entered the competition, ”said Griffeth. “When you suffer such a tragic injury, there are many mental blocks of this magnitude that you have to work through to come back. In our minds we wanted to put her out there with a (Yurchenko), clean it up and give her some confidence. “

Rucker competed against the Yurchenko in multiple meetings to start the season, but they never seemed to hold up.

“There was so much pressure on my lower limbs from this height,” she explained.

One day, Griffeth turned to Rucker to retrain and ride the Yurchenko 1.5. The idea was that they “would be safe with it and focus on taking a little controlled step on landing”.

At first Rucker was scared of the idea, but it got around to it quickly and when she landed her first Yurchenko 1.5 in practice it was over.

“As soon as I landed my first one on the mat, I said, ‘Oh, I’m fine,” said Rucker. “I knew then that I would be fine.”

However, there were still some concerns about holding her vault in place during competition so that Rucker didn’t make a single landing in the later half of the season. Instead, she tried to take a controlled step, sometimes with great effect. The controlled stride even became a joke between her and Griffeth, especially when she started recording landings in practice.

Jaedyn Rucker of Utah Utes reacts to her vault during the NCAA regional finals at the Maverik Center on Saturday, April 3, 2021. The Utes advance to the next round. Annie Barker, Deseret News

“It’s become an inside joke because every time I’m stuck I ask, ‘Am I kicking Garrett?'” Rucker said with a laugh.

In the warm-up exercises before the regional finals, Rucker put the landing on one of her vaults, so of course she turned to Griffeth and asked, “Should I take a step?”

Unlike all previous times, however, Griffeth said no to her.

“I said, ‘At this point we’ll just take the stick,” he said.

Two hours later she picked up the stick, just one that counted. It couldn’t have come at a better time, for Rucker or Utah.

“Obviously we’re incredibly proud of her and her sheer determination to get to this point,” said Farden. “She is critical. She was a key component and is someone who, at her optimal level, has the streaks to compete at the back end of the line-up on an elite team. For her, this is what we envisioned to come back and be in the position she is in, to be the contributor that she is. “