A few weeks ago, Avery Neff was wearing two casts on her ankles and rolling around on a scooter.
This week, the star freshman was wearing a leotard on the floor at the Dumke Center. She wasn’t on a scooter. And there were no casts on her ankle.
Neff sustained her injury against Iowa State on Jan. 17 and has been out ever since. She was on her final tumbling pass of her floor routine before she landed awkwardly on both ankles.
Now she’s expected to be back soon, according to Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf.
“She’s making really good progress,” Dockendorf said. “I think the combination of her determination, her discipline, with all of the recovery stuff that she needs to do she’s doing 100% of everything that she can possibly do. And then, honestly, a lot of credit needs to go to our athletic trainer and our medical staff that has they’re doing everything that they can to help her, spending a lot of extra time doing some of the aqua therapy stuff, just all the little things that will give her the opportunity to get back as fast as possible.
“I’m not going to put a date on it, but I will tell you she’s going to be back pretty soon.”
The star freshman is expected to be eased back into Utah’s rotation, and she will start on bars.
“I think, as we talked about it before, with sprained ankles, there isn’t a definite timeline,” Dockendorf said. “It really is up to the individual. And bars would be would probably be the first event that we would see her back on, and the goal will be to, add more events as we progress. But, again we just can’t we just don’t know the exact timeline on it.”
