Milliet, Tigers head to NCAA Regionals in Utah

Auburn gymnastics left for regionals Wednesday ahead of Saturday’s competition, and Auburn junior Abby Milliet said she feels both excited and nervous.

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“I have never in my four years been to Utah to compete,” she said. “So it’ll be something new.”

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Although Milliet said the team sometimes only stays in a city for less than 24 hours when traveling for a meet, they’re leaving three days early to help the team acclimate to the change in elevation. She said she hasn’t had to acclimate to elevation like this in a long time but added that the team has health to their advantage.

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“We’re all in really, pretty good shape, so I’m not too worried about it,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”

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Milliet started gymnastics when she was 3 years old, after her parents caught her climbing a two-story ladder and decided she needed an outlet to get rid of her energy. From the beginning, she said she was good at gymnastics.

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“I was one of the lucky ones,” Milliet said. “It just came naturally.”

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She stuck with it and never played any other sports growing up, except kicking the soccer ball around at recess. She practiced gymnastics alongside her other two sisters, Nicole and Emily, until Nicole had a leg injury and Emily moved to Missouri to compete at Lindenwood University.

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“Oh, it was so much fun,” she recalled. “I wish me and my younger sister (Emily) could be on the same team. That would be a dream come true.”

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Before she came to Auburn, Milliet trained in The Elite Program. She said her focus was on the Olympics and had no clue she wanted to compete in college. But when she came to Auburn, she said she liked the coaches and how they interacted with each other. In 2013, she decided to quit The Elite Program and continue her career at Auburn.

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Her time at Auburn started off strong. Her freshman year, the team competed in the Super Six, scoring a spot there for the first time in 22 years. Milliet said being able to do bars and beam for the team there is her best gymnastics memory.

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“It was the first year we had made it back to nationals in a long time and then we ended up going lights out at nationals to make it to Super Six,” she said. “It was crazy, my first year.”

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Milliet studies marketing at Auburn University, and she is getting a minor in sports coaching. She said there are plenty of challenges that come with being a student-athlete.

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“It teaches you so many good lessons of time management that other students don’t get, but at the same time they’ve got days to do an assignment and we’ve got hours,” she said. “We have school in the morning, practice, tutors, and then by that time you’re just dead.”

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Additionally, Milliet said gymnasts can’t take any breaks.

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“There’s no off season,” she said. “Every gymnast will tell you that.”

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Milliet still isn’t sure what she wants to do after graduation but she said that she has options, such as sales or social media for sports teams.

“You know, if I ever fell into a hole, there’s always gymnastics coaching,” Milliet said, laughing. “I can definitely coach, and I definitely have things to say, but I’m not good with kids who don’t want to be there.”

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After a lifetime of not having time for anything but gymnastics, Milliet doesn’t plan to compete any more after graduation. 

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“I may come back and play around, but … pretty much by the end of college you’re broken,” she said. “We’re taped together.”

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That means that Milliet only has the remainder of this year and then next year to finish out her career in gymnastics. She said she wants to make the most of her time left.

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“Obviously I love gymnastics, but at the same time, I’ve been doing this since I was 3 and nothing else really,” she said. “I haven’t taken a vacation for more than a week. So it’ll be nice to start a new chapter, do something new. But I know the second I’m done, I’m gonna be like, shoot.”

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Milliet said she has her coaches to thank for her success and sparking a new interest in gymnastics for her. Coming from harsher, more intense environments, she said her coaches have taught her how to have fun with gymnastics.

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To other young girls growing up in gymnastics, Milliet has some advice.

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“I would definitely say stick with it,” she said. “I remember many days when you are just like ‘I wanna quit,’ and you kind of just have to say to yourself, ‘You can quit, but you can’t quit today.’ You can’t quit on a bad day, because once you feel that good day, you’re gonna be like ‘Oh, never mind.’ So you just have to stick with it through the good and the bad and make sure you have fun with it, because if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.”

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Milliet will try to embrace this advice on Saturday as she competes on bars, beam and floor with her team in Utah and has fun while doing it.

The No. 3-seeded Tigers will compete against No. 1 seed Utah, No. 2 California, BYU, Stanford and Southern Utah. The top two scoring teams will advance to the NCAA Championships on April 20-21.

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This story is an article I wrote for The Auburn Villager. The photos of Abby were from an assignment I did with The Auburn Plainsman.