She’s back

Injury can’t stop Andrus

By DAVID DeMILLE
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL

SUU junior gymnast Jessiann Andrus tends to do things quietly, as an unassuming young woman whose demeanor would scarcely indicate the unwavering determination that, when looking at her talents and accomplishments, becomes abundantly apparent.
Andrus returned to action Jan. 10 after missing nearly a year to a severe foot injury and performed brilliantly in the first meet of the season, winning the uneven bars with a score of 9.825 and tying for the win on the balance beam with a 9.750.
The Thunderbirds finished with their highest opening-meet score ever, and Andrus left as a major contributor who had quietly come back from a considerable obstacle.
“That meet was great,” Andrus said. “It’s fun to be back competing. It was hard last year because I had to sit and watch, and it was the best we’ve ever done. I was worried, but it’s worked out well and now I’m just happy to be back.”
Andrus suffered a severe mid-foot sprain after competing in just two meets last season. The injury, which required surgery and countless hours of rehab, would have been the end of competition for most athletes. For Andrus, it was only a short stumbling block to contend with, and coming back to compete with the T-Birds was never really a question.
“I had to try it out,” Andrus said. “I was on crutches for three months, then I wore a boot and had to do a lot of ankle strengthening exercises and walking. It was hard not to be able to go out and do things.”
With help from the training and medical staffs at SUU — including trainers Ricky Mendini and Kyle Wilson and physician Robert Nakken — Andrus worked her way back.
To have Andrus ready for this season was a more-than-pleasant surprise for SUU coach Scott Bauman.
“We figured we had lost her for good,” Bauman said. “Given the extent of the injury, we thought that was it. There are certain intangibles about people — heart, mental strength — that you really can’t measure until something happens. Jessiann has the right amount of all those things. These kinds of things are what can make or break an athlete, and she just looked at it as something in her path and she handled it.”
The hardest part of the injury for Andrus was sitting out and watching her teammates compete without her. A measure of comfort was gained from the support of another teammate who was out.
“It was really frustrating sometimes,” Andrus said. “It helped to have Megan with me; we motivated each other.”
Dealing with the kind of injury Andrus suffered is not easy to do, and to come back and compete at an elite level of a demanding physical sport like gymnastics is
we motivated each other.”
Dealing with the kind of injury Andrus suffered is not easy to do, and to come back and compete at an elite level of a demanding physical sport like gymnastics is nothing short of incredible.
This season’s student trainer, Nathan Slaughter, said he was impressed with the achievement and said that coming back from that kind of injury is always a difficult task.
“It takes a lot of patience,” Slaughter said. “It takes discipline and hard work to come back from a severe injury like that.”
Now Andrus and Crane are both back on the SUU roster, and the team’s hopes are higher than ever with a deep, talented squad ready to perform.
For Andrus, who grew up in Spanish Fork and was always interested in gymnastics, quitting the sport was never really an option. The desire has been there since the beginning.
“I started when I was about 5,” Andrus said. “I was always doing cartwheels and stuff in the living room, so my parents decided to get me into it.”
Andrus competed at Level 10 nationals with Nebo Gymnastics and spent time with the dance company at Spanish Fork High, where she graduated with honors.
Coach Bauman was able to recruit Andrus to SUU, and now she is having a good time just being a college student and a collegiate athlete.
The pressure to do well in class and concentrate on her sport is difficult at times, but Andrus goes about her business in her quiet way, never complaining and doing her part to keep the team’s GPA high — SUU is looking to win its sixth academic national championship — and the scores high during meets.

  

Junior Jessiann Andrus performs during SUU’s intrasquad meet. Andrus has returned to the squad after missing nearly a year of competition because of a foot injury that ended her 2002 season prematurely.
ANNIE BROWN / UNIVERSITY JOURNAL

It helps to have solid team chemistry, and that seems to be one of the ’Birds’ more abundant attributes this season.“The team is way fun,” Andrus said. “We always hang out and do stuff together; it’s closer than in the past. It’s really fun when we start travelling. The girls do crazy things.”
When she isn’t hitting the books or the mats, Andrus is a typical college student, and in her humble way she acknowledges her penchant for normalcy.
“I’m usually hanging out with friends,” Andrus said. “I like hiking and doing things outdoors. I like the mountains and going to the lake. When I’m done here I can go wakeboarding and snowboarding and other things. Just the usual stuff.”
That is how Andrus operates, taking things as they come and taking little credit for her feats in the gym or her recovery from injury. She simply meets things head on, calmly overcoming the troubles that arise and constantly working to improve herself.
In the gym, her attitude is refreshing for teammates and coaches alike, and her response to her injury serves as a symbol of the optimism and relentlessness that the team now strives to compete with.
“She’s very surreptitious,” Bauman said. “She’s very sneaky about it but she’s funny. She’s really one of the nicest people you’ll meet, and she’s easily one of the most fun people to coach.”
Following up on a record-setting meet will be the next task for Andrus and the rest of the T-Birds, but all signs indicate that this is a squad that approaches its contests with a sanguine air about it, well aware of the limitless possibilities of the new season.
Even after having the best opening meet in school history, the ’Birds have plenty left up their sleeves for the immediate future.
“We used watered-down routines,” Andrus said. “We’ve got to get the difficulty up a little and hit all of our routines so we can do well at regionals and get to nationals, where we’ve never been. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Meeting a challenge is really not a big deal to someone like Andrus. She will simply set about the task — quiet, unassuming, yet determined — and find some way to come out on top.
If the squad can perform like that, the team goal seems more than a distinct possibility.