Olivia Trautman's comeback story: Listen to your heart 

University of Oklahoma fifth-year senior Olivia Trautman couldn't believe her gymnastics career was over.

It was September 2022, and she had just felt a sharp pain in her knee. It didn't come after some difficult element or landing a big vault.

It happened while doing a front tuck down off a block.

"I could walk. I went to stretch and then went up to my trainer and I was like, 'Something doesn't feel right,'" Trautman recalled of the injury in a recent exclusive interview with Olympics.com.

After talking with the team doctor, Oklahoma trainer Jennifer Richardson told Trautman they should get an MRI, "just to make sure."

Trautman had struggled with injuries the last several years of her career, and the MRI showed that she had another one: a torn patellar tendon.

"Jen actually came to my house and sat me down," Trautman said of learning the news. "It was kind of an emotional time because she was just like, 'I don't think gymnastics is in the picture again.' I was heartbroken, I was crying obviously.

"It felt like the rug just got pulled out from under me," she said later. "It wasn't like I was on crutches... and so it was hard, that moment was definitely hard."

She had given up on returning to the sport, resigned herself to being a student assistant coach.

"I couldn't do what I wanted to do physically," said Trautman of her time out of the sport. "I knew that I had to step up vocally and be someone where people would come to me to ask for advice, whether it's gymnastics, school life, or whatever it is."

The fifth-year senior put off the surgery, waiting six weeks to go under the knife. She wanted to enjoy some of the fall, especially as the team welcomed several recruits to campus.

Once she had the operation, Trautman says she felt she could return to the sport one more time.

"The minute I got the surgery, it kind of felt like the year before where I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to come back.'"

• Oklahoma cruises to sixth NCAA women's gymnastics team title

‘No expectations, but no limitations.’

It wasn't quite that simple, though.

She wasn't sure what her body could take and if she'd even be allowed to try. But Trautman knew that she needed to at least broach the subject with coaches, trainers, and doctors.

"Honestly, when I was going to go ask, I was scared," admitted Trautman. "I talked to one of my best friends about it for a while, but I was scared because I was like, 'What if they say no?' And then that's it."

She first spoke with head coach K.J. Kindler and then with Richardson, who told the 22-year-old she needed to ask her doctor.

Her doctor didn't make any promises, but he didn't say no.

"He told me no expectations, but no limits," she said.

Trautman thought, given the six-month recovery time the injury came with, that maybe she could be back on the uneven bars before the end of the season.

"They said like March, April [for my return]," said Trautman. "I was like, 'Okay. That's fine. I just want to wear a Sooner leo one more time.'"

Her bars training quickly led to asking about beam where she lands most of her elements on her other leg and then eventually to vault.

Back before she knew it

Astonishingly, Trautman missed just three meets of her super senior season.

She had an unexpected debut on the balance beam on January 29 at Oklahoma’s dual meet in Denver.

“I wasn’t supposed to be in the lineup in that meet,” Trautman explained. “They were just going to let me warm up to see how I was going to do. I warmed up well, and then some other people were warming up a little iffy, so K.J. felt like I could go.”

She did a little more than that, earning a 9.950 score on the balance beam.

“When I nailed that routine, it was just so many emotions,” she recalled. “Just because I proved myself. I proved to everybody else that you can do the impossible, pretty much, because they said I would never do it again.”

Trautman competed only on the balance beam in the next three meets, notching back-to-back-to-back 9.900 scores.

Then, at home in Norman, Oklahoma, she delivered three routines: a 9.975 on vault; a 9.925 on bars; and a 9.925 on beam.

Trautman competed in those three events for the remainder of the season. She only earned two scores below 9.800 in 2023.

Her season – and career – came to a spectacular end at the NCAA Championships in mid-April in Ft. Worth, Texas, as she captured her first individual national title on the vault and helped her Sooners to a second-straight team win.

“We've worked so hard through August, all the way through April trying to do that,” said Trautman. “We all held ourselves to a high standard. And so just having and sharing those moments with my best friends, the people I look up to is so, so special.”

So, too, was the fact that Trautman was not only there, part of the team effort that gave OU its sixth title in nine years, but that she was such an integral part of it having nearly walked away from the sport seven months prior.

“All her heart is in this program, and she’s giving it her all,” said Kindler during her team’s victory press conference in Ft. Worth. “I advised her to retire this year after the injury this fall. She was not having it, so obviously, I was wrong. But who knows? Who knew that at that time. My head was on her future; her head was on her now. It was up to her at the end of the day.

“You have to have a huge heart, but you also have to have big guts to do something like this with your coach looking at you saying, ‘Maybe it’s time,’ you know,” continued Kindler. “So, I’m really proud she didn’t listen to me.”