Many people have a moment or a day that stands out as one they wish they could forget or wish it never happened. For LSU senior gymnast Summer Hubbard that day was Oct. 9, 2008.
That was the day Hubbard’s grandmother Shirley died after a long battle with cancer.
The event was especially painful because Hubbard was raised by her grandmother as well as her mother.
“My parents are divorced, and because of my father’s absence my grandma stepped in to fill his shoes,” Hubbard said. “I lived back and forth between my mom’s place and my grandma’s place, so I was raised by both.”
In fact, Shirley was the one who got Hubbard into gymnastics in the first place. She noticed her three-year-old granddaughter bouncing around the house with an apparent unending abundance of energy.
“With me having all this energy and she being a 50-year-old lady trying to take care of me, she decided to take me to a gymnastics facility where they had an open gym program where you could go for an hour and pay $5 and you could roam free in the entire gym and release a bunch of energy,” Hubbard said.
It did not take long before the coaches saw talent in Hubbard and recommended to her mother and grandmother that she begin training gymnastics.
Not long after Hubbard began training, her mother transferred her to LaFleur’s St. Pete in St. Petersburg, Fla., which eventually became Tampa Bay Turners after former LSU gymnast Colleen Barger bought it, and Hubbard stayed with the gym until she signed with LSU in 2006.
However, like many gymnasts Hubbard suffered from burnout through the years, and she walked away from the sport on a few occasions. Every time she quit her grandmother was there to encourage her to get back into the sport.
“My grandma was more of a lay down the law type of lady, and she was the one who really kept me in check and ultimately helped me become who I am today,” Hubbard said. “She was the one pushing me and encouraging me, and she wanted me to focus on gymnastics because she said I could excel.”
When her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer during Hubbard’s junior year of high school, Hubbard decided she needed to step away from the sport to focus on spending time with Shirley, but she knew she could not give up on her goals.
“I was having a hard time with my grandmother’s illness,” she said, “and when my senior year came around I realized gymnastics was really what I wanted to do in college and was my goal since I was little. It would have been a huge regret to miss out, so I went back to the gym for my senior year.”
Hubbard worked harder than before in the gym as her grandmother’s encouragement gave her strength to keep going.
When head coach D-D Breaux offered Hubbard a scholarship to LSU, Hubbard jumped at the chance to attend a university closer to home than her other offers.
Hubbard had achieved her goal of earning a college scholarship for gymnastics, so she set her sights on a new goal.
“She told me when she was a freshman that she wanted her grips retired in a shadow box,” Breaux said. “She set high goals, and she wanted to do something significant during her career.”
Injuries to her back and ankles kept Hubbard from training all four events during her freshman and sophomore seasons. When it seemed everything was coming together before her junior season in fall 2008, her grandmother’s illness took a turn for the worse, and Hubbard wanted to be by her grandmother’s side.
“I am fortunate enough to have great people behind me at LSU – my teammates, my coaches, people like Miriam Segar – who were able to send me home nearly every weekend to see her, and going home every weekend brought harder news and a new problem,” Hubbard said.
When her grandmother died on Oct. 9, Hubbard was at a crossroads. The most influential person in her life was gone, but Hubbard knew she could not give up now.
“I gave myself a choice: ‘Summer, you can let this get the best of you and you can sit here and wallow in self-pity and let things deteriorate in your life, or you can stand up, be strong and become a better person.’ “
After Hubbard returned to Baton Rouge she found inspiration in a new friend who was instrumental in lifting her spirits and helping her stay focused on gymnastics.
“D-D was by far the closest person to me at the time,” Hubbard said. “She was the most forgiving of my emotions. She was really amazing, and my relationship with D-D changed. It used to be between a coach and an athlete, and then when grandma passed away D-D became my coach and my friend.”
Hubbard said she believes what does not kill a person makes them stronger, and she became living proof. Her scoring averages on each event went up during her junior and senior seasons after she lost her grandmother, and she capped off her career as LSU’s only three time First Team All-American on bars.
Hubbard went into the NCAA Individual Event Finals in April with one last routine to perform, and it was going to be in her home state with all of her close friends in the stands to cheer her on.
“She wasn’t trying to win it. She just wanted to relish the moment,” Breaux said. “It was her last performance, and she was relaxed and at peace with herself, knowing this was it.”
With Breaux’s encouragement and Susan Jackson‘s calming influence, Hubbard performed one of the best routines of her life to finish as the national runner up on bars, LSU’s highest finish in the event.
Excited with her performance, Hubbard celebrated with her coaches and shared tears of joy with her teammates.
“I said, ‘Summer, I bet Shirley is here. This one is for her. Let’s just enjoy it,’ ” Breaux said.
Hubbard nodded to Breaux, but her grandmother was already deep in her thoughts in one of the best moments of her life.
“I thought of her right before I did my routine,” Hubbard said, “and a lot of those tears of joy afterward were for her as well.”