Coach Welker, Hu Talk Upcoming 2025 Season
10/11/2024 10:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
Two-time All-American Helen Hu announced her return to the roster on Monday
COLUMBIA, Mo. – The University of Missouri gymnastics head coach Shannon Welker and student-athlete Helen Hu met with the media on Friday morning and provided the following statements regarding Hu's return to the program.
Head Coach Shannon Welker
Opening statement…
"Well, thanks to everyone for hopping on. Good to see most many of you again this season. We're off to a pretty exciting start with training wise, it's going great. Obviously, with the addition of Helen, that's pretty exciting too. We've known obviously for a little while here, but it just obviously get announced. I think we got a great opportunity to do something pretty special this year. And we're excited to have you guys join us to follow it."
On his reaction when Helen decided to come back…
"I've been working on this for a while, quite honestly. So, when Helen graduated and she had a couple of years of eligibility remaining, I made her promise – I said, 'Look, if you decide to come back, you have to come here.' And she goes, 'I will, but I'm not coming back to compete.' And I said, 'Okay, fair enough.' Anyways, she was in this summer and every once in a while I would text her and I'd be like, 'Hey, you want to come back?' She'd just send me a smiley emoji and just laugh. This summer, she was in for a teammate's wedding and she came into the gym, hopped up on the beam and did her old beam routine. And I'm like, 'Man, that looks good still.' She had some prerequisites that she still needed to apply to grad school, which she's looking to do not this academic year, but the following. So I said, 'Why don't you let us take care of your schooling right there?' She laughed a little bit. At the end of that practice, our team was in their training over the summer. She goes, 'Are you serious about the classes?' And I felt like at that point I might have had her. So anyways, I put a couple of her ex-teammates on a little bit of prompting her into it. She was staying with Josie over the summer, so I told her to talk Helen into coming back. And so sure as heck, about the next day she came back and she goes, 'All right, I think I'll do it.' That was like sometime in July or June, I forget. Then it was just a matter of kind of working through some compliance, some other things and just getting her academic stuff squared away. Long story short, we were really excited about it. I'm actually surprised our team was able to stay quiet about it for as long as they did. But, she brings a great beam routine. Bars might be an option, but we'll just kind of have to see how things go. But, we're excited to have Helen back and it should be a great addition to an already great team."
On how Helen broke the news to him…
"I think we went out for lunch like the next day after the wedding and she said 'I'm going to do it, Shannon'. I said, 'all right, let's do it, Helen'."
On Helen coming back to the program…
"She loves University of Missouri gymnastics and University of Missouri. And I think that's awesome that she wants to come back. So I think that speaks highly of the culture that we have here and the teammates that we have. Yeah, and we have a multi-time All-American, multi SEC member. You know, anytime you can bring somebody like that into your culture or back into the fold on your team, that definitely gives confidence to other people around them when they have people like that that want to be a part of what you're doing. I think that speaks volumes right there. And certainly, you know, Helen is just the same all the time. And I think that's really what makes her a great competitor and what makes her a great teammate too, because she never gets too high, never gets too low on that end. And so yeah, we're excited to have her."
On the potential of the team…
"College Gym News came out with a little snippet of teams that could surprise you this year, right? And Missouri was number one in that list. And I think that's great. We got that recognition. But the next day we were actually talking as a team and I said 'that was cool, right?' And everybody was like, 'yeah, that was cool.' The thing is, we built this team to do exactly what people are saying they're going to be surprised about. I go, we're not going to be surprised, quite honestly, because we think that, number one, those are our goals, right? Number two, we fully feel we are capable of those. So the only body that's going to be surprised hopefully are the people that wrote that article."
On the concern of lineup depth for beam…
"We just had a little bit of some depth issues there from the year before and a little bit of consistency. And, you know, that wasn't a great combination last year in that event. We did very well. We were like, I think, 13th to 12th or higher on every other event in the country, and so that was really good. Beam was a little bit of that, a little bit of inconsistency there, for a number of reasons. So we knew going into the off season that we had to address that area, and now the transfer portal allows you to do that in a very quick fashion, if you can find the right people with the right skill set right there. Our freshman class is really good on Beam, but I also know this is that it can take a year at times, you know, to kind of acclimate and do some of those things. Now, I do anticipate we'll have some freshmen that are competitive to make lineups on every event, much less beam on there. But yeah, if you look at Lauren McPherson, I mean, she has been very solid on beam. That is what I would say her best event. You know, Amy Weir, I know she doesn't have a lot of competitive history, but she's good. She was like the next person up at Oklahoma who has a pretty good beam lineup, right? And we got Addie Lawrence back, who was a stud for us freshman year, right? So we're excited to have her back. Obviously, we got Helen coming in, so I actually think Beam will be our most improved event this year. Now, we had some room to improve on there, but it definitely will be one of our most improved events and it'll be definitely competitive with all the other events there. And I think it'll actually be a strength of ours this year."
On Helen's training at her club gym in Chicago…
"We just communicate with Helen on like, hey, where's our team at at this point? Like, what are we doing in practices? And then, you know, we usually like once a week or once every other week, we'll kind of FaceTime Helen in and she'll show a routine or show her skills. And that's not only good so we can just kind of assess where she's at, but it's also good for just, I think our team watches it. So that's good for them to have a little bit of camaraderie and just some culture right there."
On the readmission process for Helen…
The best training plan here is I wanted to make sure she was in a good training environment more than anything. Sure, we'd love her with us, but she had had some commitments in the works as well and prior to this making this decision. So she's in a great environment. I know her club coach up in Chicago, we've had a great relationship with them. And she's helping her get ready to go. And we felt like this was just a better track for her, not only gymnastics wise, but just also just life wise too in there. And so she's looking great. We'll zoom her in for some, she'll show some routines via Zoom sometimes or FaceTime. And she is allowed via compliance to train as a former student athlete, she can train with our team twice a month. So she's been coming in. She's been here twice so far and she'll train with our team a little bit. And she should be back, I think November 16th, and she'll be here that weekend. And then she'll join us as soon as the semester is over full time. So I think that's like December 14th, roughly, somewhere right around there. She'll be joining our team full time and she'll be at our black and gold exhibition, which will be December 18th with Columbia Public Schools."
On the additions of freshmen and transfer recruits…
"I think we become very selective about the people that we're bringing into our team. Yeah, definitely listen, we got to have the talent for sure. But, you know, there's a lot of people out there with talent. So we definitely make sure that it's the right type of person that's coming in and will fit in. But we also know with so many new people, I mean, we probably have almost half our team is new, right? Between freshmen and transfers, you know, we're probably just under 50% with new people. We immediately just really worked on the cultural piece and really got after that and have been very purposeful and mindful of just some frequent conversations and things like that. Because I think the sooner we can get everybody, make sure they're on board and feeling comfortable and that piece of it and understand the mission, the better off we're going to be. We feel like that's really been a difference in how we've been able to be competitive, maybe with teams that maybe on paper have a little more talent. I'm impressed with our transfers. Like those young ladies are good - we just have to remember they're not freshmen. They've been successful. We just got to figure out how they operate a little bit, what's the best way to communicate with them to get the most out of them and meet them in the middle a little bit. But I'm excited about our transfers. I mean, I think they're going to jump immediately into lineups. They have less of that proving to do because they've been doing it right in at this level, at least at the collegiate division one level. You know, our newcomers, our freshmen, there's a little bit of a difference there. Now, I think they're going to get there and many of them will be there, but it'll be a lot harder this year, I think, than it has been in the past, which is not a bad thing. I think in the past, our freshmen have gotten right into lineups right away and maybe a little quicker than I wanted, quite honestly, because we just didn't have the depth. But now we've got the quality depth and we can take our time and make sure we develop them because we will need that freshman class not only this year, but I think we're going to really need them next year down the road. And if we can take our time and make sure we don't have to rush them, I think that'll pay big dividends in the future too."
Redshirt Senior Helen Hu
Opening statement…
"First, I just want to say thank you to Coach Welker and the whole sports staff to make this opportunity possible for me and to welcome me back into the sport that I really thought I was done with for good. When I graduated, I felt that I just had these two options of either taking that fifth year right away or being done. Where I was at the moment, I thought I was done and I was just going to be content with what I had achieved. I never thought in a million years that I could take a year off and come back. When that opportunity presented itself, I just found myself unable to turn that down. It was really a funny story because the only reason this happened was because I was visiting Missouri for a previous teammate's wedding, and was visiting the gym while I was in town. And that's how this opportunity kind of came up. It was really random, but I felt really lucky that all of that lined up with that timing. I'm really excited to compete for Mizzou one more time."
On her off year, backpacking in Asia, Europe and South America…
"I traveled to 14, 15 countries. It was a lot. I was jumping different place every two or three weeks, staying at hostels and backpacking with my sister. It was plans that we had made when we were stuck in quarantine together. It's hard to describe it all together because every place was so different and the things I did in every country was so different. Gymnastics is an all year sport, there isn't really an off season, even when we're not competing, we're training and so it was really exciting to have this open schedule, open plan. I went where I wanted to go without any specific plans. I learned how to surf. I worked at a hostel. I went hiking a lot. I just got to explore who I was outside of the sport. Which was really exciting for me."
On the first and last country she visited…
"I started in Japan and I finished in Finland."
On how fast she decided to come back to compete after the wedding visit…
"It happened pretty quick, honestly. Pretty much the first day I visited the gym. I hopped up on the beam, I went to see if I could still do a front aerial just to see, and it actually went really well. I had a lot of fun. I ended up doing most of my skills on the beam that day. I was very sore the next day, but no regrets. Shannon made the offer that day, kind of an offhand remark, like, 'Oh, you know, you still have that year you could come back.' I thought he was joking. I didn't take it seriously. But then he kept talking about it and pretty much within that week, by the end of the week, I was laying in bed at night, unable to fall asleep thinking, 'Wow, what if I did beam again?' I couldn't fall asleep because I was so excited at the idea that it was possible for me to re-enter the sport. Pretty much after about a week, I realized I wanted to pursue it. But it wasn't a couple of weeks until we figured out logistics and whether this was really possible."
On the decision making process…
"It was really just this excitement that I felt thinking about the possibility of coming back that helped me make the decision that I wanted to do it. When I was weighing the pros and cons, thinking about it, I had all these plans coming back to Chicago. I had lined up an apartment to move into in the fall and all sorts of things that I felt logistically, 'Why would I do this? This is crazy.' I pretty much shocked myself even considering this as a real option.
But I just couldn't let it go. And I was talking to my friends and my families and I was calling people thinking, 'You know, should I do this?' And everyone was just like, 'What do you want?' And this whole past year that I took off traveling, everything was about figuring out what I want to do, outside of the sport, and who I am. And I felt confident that this is what I want and I'm in the right place. I'm in the right time and we'll figure out the logistics as we go."
On her excitement joining Shannon's team…
"This team is really amazing. We're looking really strong. There's a lot of depth. There's a lot of really good energy. I'm so excited to be a part of that and to see where it's come from my freshman year. Showing up to meets with us and our moms, pretty much that was it in MIzzou arena. To where it is now, seeing pictures of this entire place packed every row and the excitement that people have for not just Mizzou gymnastics, but gymnastics as a sport. It's been really amazing to see, and I'm so excited to be a part of that just a little bit longer."
On events outside of beam…
"I did do a couple giants a few months ago. [bars] But no, I think beam is where I can really help the team the most. Coming back after a year off, it really minimizes impact on my body. Due to my past knee injury and my back injury, I think this is the best bet for me and how I can help the team the most, while staying as healthy as I can be."
On if she was done traveling when she made the decision to come back…
"Yes, I had just finished traveling. I made sure to get back to the U.S. by June purely because of that wedding. When I came and visited, I had just finished traveling for a year straight, for about a week. That's also why jumping into fall season would have been really tough for me in fall training because I just got back and so I was still kind of getting my bearings."
On how practices has been going…
"Training has been going pretty great. It's a little bit weird because I'm going to the club gym on my own time, when it's pretty much empty. So it's just me and the lights buzzing and whatever music I pick. I'm doing just beam for about an hour or so a day. And it's really fun because I've never gotten to train gymnastics completely alone. It sounds like it wouldn't be fun, but I'm actually just on the beam being silly goofy. Without anyone watching, I can kind of just dance up there and have fun and see what I can do. I also get sent updates of where the team is and what they're doing. As we've been progressing, okay, we're doing half routines, I make sure I train half routines. Now I'm doing full routines. That timeline has been pretty structured for me, which is really helpful. And like Shannon said, we do FaceTimes now. And the first time we FaceTime, I busted my butt. I got really nervous. But we're doing a lot better now. That's the one downside of training on my own is that I hadn't had eyes on me while I did my gymnastics, after a year off, it's very different. Visiting the gym each month has been really helpful and everything's going really well."
On how the skills are coming back (muscle memory)...
"Definitely part of it's muscle memory. I trained these skills for over 10 years, that doesn't just go away. I also stayed pretty active while I was traveling. I learned how to surf. I was hiking a lot. I actually got yoga teacher certified. I kept stretching a lot, so I kept my flexibility up. A lot of it was just building back up some endurance and a little bit of strength. The first day I visited the gym, I went up and I did my aerial series and I was like, 'Oh, that's still there. That's pretty cool!' Which is part of the reason why I felt it was possible to come back for this year."
On who she is outside of gymnastics, and how traveling affected that..
"That's a big question. It was really daunting to take that year off and travel. So many people go right into more school or into careers and it was really scary doing this big thing saying I don't have a plan. I don't have anything that's furthering my career, or anything that I can put on a resume. I'm going to go and have fun and explore the world. And it felt kind of silly in some ways, in certain settings, but I also felt that if I didn't do it now, I would never do it. I'm really grateful that first, I even have the ability and the privilege to be able to do that. And second, that I built the courage to do it, and a lot of that is thanks to my sister as well. Having someone with me when I traveled was a big help. It's still affecting me now. And I wouldn't say that that journey is done, but it definitely was the beginning of me figuring out who I am outside of the sport. And that's a big part of how me reentering the sport, kind of figuring out how I fit that into my life now, it not being my entire life, but still being really important to me, and how I can bring my personality and my passions for other things not just on the beam, but to the team culture."
On favorite memory from the trip..
"I think surfing was probably the most memorable journey for me in the grand scheme of things because learning yoga was not the most difficult thing for me given my gymnastics history, but surfing was so hard. I went in thinking, 'I'm an athlete. I can do this. This will be easy. Give me a week, I'll figure this out.' And for four straight weeks, I was just face planting into the water, getting absolutely wrecked by these waves. It was really humbling. I was like, 'Okay, wow, you still suck at a lot of things, Helen. You have a lot to learn in this world.' It was really such a challenge, and it made me so motivated that I was supposed to leave that place in a month, and I stayed an extra month just so I could learn how to surf better. And that really made me feel I still have transferable skills from gymnastics. I enjoy a challenge and I can take up whatever I decide to do and just go at it until I figure it out. That also gave me a lot of confidence coming back again after a year off thinking, 'You have the mental, not just the physical strength, but the mental strength to face any challenge and really persevere through whatever difficulties I face.' But surfing was really humbling and also really fun. The second month I was there went a lot better and I was actually standing up on some waves.
On whose wedding it was…
"The wedding was for Adalayna Hufendiek-Schrimpf. She was my roommate and teammate all four years at Mizzou. She's one of my closest friends that I made in college."
On if there was any point while traveling when she missed the gym..
"Of course I missed competing and I missed doing gymnastics but I kind of fully closed that book in my brain. There was no moment where I thought, 'I wish I could go back.' I didn't think about it because for me, that just felt like a waste of energy and thought when I felt that I had moved on. I was really focused on my year of travel and having fun and just exploring everything outside of gymnastics that it didn't come into my brain that much about coming back and doing gymnastics again. Every once in a while I throw a flip and see what I can still do and do a handstand and have fun but it was a huge shock to me to even consider coming back again when Shannon brought it up because I never thought of it as a possibility the entire year."
On if Adeline has taken any credit for Helen's comeback…
"She hasn't quite verbally taken credit, but I'm sure she's thinking it. I would give her credit, for sure. If her wedding was another year or even a few months later, this probably wouldn't have happened. She's really the reason I came back. When I finished my travels, that was a clear end date for me because I'm not going to miss this wedding. That's why I came back to the U.S. when I did, and why I was in Missouri, and why I visited the gym and how this opportunity came up. Shannon wouldn't have called me that summer and said, 'Why don't you come back?' Because I would have just been like, you're silly and I wouldn't have considered it. But going back in the gym, seeing the team, seeing gymnastics, being able to get up on the beam and see what I can still do. It was all those little moments that just happened that kind of came to this opportunity and this decision to come back."
On what her school plan is..
"I'm not doing a master's. I'm actually just re-enrolling as an undergrad to get some more prereqs done for physical therapy school. At the time when I graduated, I took all the classes needed for occupational therapy school, but since I've taken my year off, I've decided I don't want to pursue that path anymore. There are prereqs for physical therapy school that I need to fulfill. Actually, one of the reasons too, when I visited the gym, I was mentioning to Shannon my future plans was going back to school for a semester to take physics and another biology class so that I could apply, that's kind of why this also matched up."
On what she is doing with the rest of her free time…
"Training is more than an hour. I'm up on the beam for about an hour, but I also still need to do some weightlifting. I need to do a lot of prehab exercises to keep up with to restrengthen things for my knee, a lot of preventative exercises. I'm really in the gym for a little over two hours. I'm also coaching at my club gym, that's taking up a good chunk of time. That's why it kind of works out because I just go to my club gym a few hours early, and I do my own training, and I coach from 4 to 8.30. The mornings are pretty open and I'm kind of used to having no schedule and no jobs this past year. So it doesn't feel like a whole lot of time because I went from having the whole day and the whole week off to having only half the morning. When you're off, I figured out a lot of hobbies and passions. A lot of my day in the morning is I like to cook food for myself, I take my time with that. I read a lot. I go outside, I go for walks. I like to rollerblade, all sorts of random little hobbies that I'm still kind of building for myself in the mornings."
On how she is adjusting to the change of new coaches, new athletes, gymnastics in general…
"In the time I was there, I was feeling that change happen already. My senior year, we had broken a record on our attendance at a meet and it was jam-packed. We were sitting there like three hours after the meet, signing autographs. I felt like I was there for kind of the beginnings of that really big change, and I've seen it in the past year on social media continue to grow. Being there for it is really different. I'm really excited to kind of jump back in and see just how much more it's grown since I've been gone in one year. A lot of new people, a lot of new coaches, and it was definitely a little bit of a shock when I first visited.
There's just so many faces and names I didn't know in this place that felt really both familiar, but also so different in a lot of ways.What's been really helpful is those visits each month. I've really gotten to meet all the team, get to know everyone a little bit, and they've all been really welcoming and super enthusiastic about my comeback. At least for now, it doesn't feel like too much of a shock, but I'm sure my first home meet at Mizzou will be like, 'Oh! Look at all these people.' I'm excited for that moment."
On her skill selection on beam…
"I changed some small things. I did re-choreograph almost the whole thing, so I'm super excited for that. I changed all the dance and my mount and my dismount. My main series and jumps, the skeleton of it's about the same. It's dressed up a little bit differently and I'm excited to show that off."
On what is the new dismount…
"A gainer pike off the front of the beam."
On what Coach Welker and the team's reaction was when she made her decision..
"I'm not sure Shannon was that shocked. If he was, he didn't show it. I think some part of him knew that the offer was going to entice me. Out of everyone, I was the most shocked myself. I mean, when I told people, they were shocked, but I was like, 'No, trust me, I am more shocked telling you this news because I cannot believe I made this decision.' I really did not think of it as a real possibility. We kind of kept it quiet. We were like, 'Let's not announce the team before we make sure that this is possible.' So there was a few weeks that was just me and the coaches kind of having a little calls and figuring out if this is going to work out logistically. But when he revealed it to the team on a team meeting, I came back from work and my phone was blown up by text from the team, saying like 'We're so excited you're back! This is crazy!' That was really exciting. I think that was honestly more exciting to get that enthusiasm from the team and the coaches than it was even this past week, just announcing it to the general public as much as I love the hype videos and the comments and enthusiasm from the gymternet, ultimately, I care more about the team being happy that I'm there and the coaches being excited for me. But yes, it was also weird hiding it publicly in general. I'm really glad that that's out because there would be times I just wanted to post something new that I was working on beam or some training and I was doing and had to keep it a secret."
On if there is any specific goal she has this year…
"Main priority definitely is just to go out there, have fun, be a good teammate, and just really enjoy every moment that I can be in the sport again. I, of course, would really love to get that 10.0 on beam just at once. Definitely my biggest bucket list item that I didn't achieve while I was there. But ultimately, like Shannon always says, 'You got to focus on the controllables', and ultimately I can't control what the judges decide and what they see. But I'm going to focus as hard as I can on presenting the best routine I possibly can and hopefully one of those times both judges will agree on no deduction."
On how this whole thing started when Helen was passing through for the wedding…
"It all happened in the gym. I was visiting while the whole team was having summer training. So it wasn't over lunch we were just chatting while I was visiting practice. He was in the middle of coaching actually, and there was this little offhanded side conversation that led to this whole other series of calls."
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Season tickets for the 2025 Mizzou gymnastics season are on sale at MUTigers.com/Tickets. The Tigers will compete in eight conference meets, hosting Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, and Auburn, and traveling to Oklahoma, LSU, Florida, and Arkansas. The full schedule will be announced later.
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Players Mentioned
