Rekindling the Passion

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - At just three-years-old, junior Jaquie Tun was already on the way to becoming a Mountaineer gymnast.

As a youngster, she was always bouncing off the walls and overflowing with energy. Her parents tried to channel some of that energy by enrolling her in gymnastics.

"I couldn't stay still," Tun recalled. "Gymnastics was a way to get the energy out of me so that I could sleep at night and help out my parents."

The Chattanooga, Tennessee, native grew up in the gym, learning new skills and perfecting her technique. Like all young athletes, she considered giving it up at times, but her parents encouraged her to stick with it. Tun had devoted so much time and hard work to gymnastics that they didn't want to see her quit when things got hard.

A five-year level 10 gymnast at the Gymnastics Center of Chattanooga, it soon became clear that Tun would have the ability to continue her gymnastics career at the collegiate level. When it came time for her to start looking at colleges, West Virginia University was far from her top five. The Mountaineer coaching staff reached out to her after seeing one of her skills videos on YouTube. After a visit to meet the coaches and current team, she realized she might be able to make a home for herself in Morgantown.

"When I came to WVU and I watched the girls I was like, 'Wow, I really want to be here'," Tun said. "The coaches were nice and the girls seemed like they were really having fun."

Today, the graphic design major couldn't be happier with her decision to earn a degree at WVU while also competing gymnastics.

"I love it here," Tun said. "I love the coaching staff as much as I did when I was looking at WVU. I also love the team. Our chemistry is really great with each other."

As a freshman, Tun was nagged by a lingering injury she sustained late in her senior year of high school. She competed in all 13 meets her first season at WVU and was a mainstay in the Mountaineers' bars lineup, earning nine top-10 scores.

Then, just before the start of her sophomore season, the Academic All-Big 12 Rookie Team honoree was staring injury in the face for the second time in more than a year. Forced to sit out to properly heal, Tun spent endless hours in the training room with the team's athletic trainer Amelia Adams, recovering and rebuilding her strength.

"Watching the other girls practice while I had to be in the back doing therapy was really hard," Tun said, "but I'm also a strong believer in things happening for a reason. I'm a lot better now than I probably would have been had I just kept going."

A member of the President's and Dean's Lists at WVU, Tun was able to return to the Mountaineers' bars lineup for the last three meets of the 2017 season. By then, she was more than ready to get back to gymnastics. She competed for the first time at Florida on March 10 and was overcome with emotion during her bars routine. The stuck landing soon became a moment she would never forget.

"I landed my bar dismount for the first time and I got dog-piled," she laughed. "That was the greatest feeling ever because it had never happened to me before."

Tun couldn't have asked for a better return. She used the success as momentum to make her junior season the best yet. As a key component of WVU's vault and bars lineups, she has recorded 14 top-10 finishes between the two events. She broke into the all-around for the first time in her career on March 11 at George Washington and just missed the podium with a fourth place, 39.175 showing.

While no student-athlete wants to miss competition, Tun found a way to look at her injury from a positive perspective. While sidelined in 2017, she learned to be patient in the face of a challenge. Tun realized why gymnastics is so important to her.

"It kind of rekindled the love and passion that I have for gymnastics," Tun said. "Forcing myself to be away from the sport really hurt me, and I didn't realize until then how much I care about gymnastics."

The Mountaineers compete as the No. 4 seed at the 2018 NCAA University Park Regional Championships on Saturday, April 7, at 4 p.m., inside Penn State's Rec Hall in University Park, Pennsylvania.

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Players Mentioned

Jaquie Tun

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