Auburn All-American Sara Hubbard continues family tradition

AUBURN, Ala. – While Auburn gymnast Sara Hubbard FaceTimed a friend during a Sunday night study session, she heard a commotion in the background from an NFL playoff game on TV.

Her cousin, Sam Hubbard, had just recovered a fumble for the Cincinnati Bengals and returned it 98 yards, scoring the longest go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter and longest fumble return TD in postseason history.

“’Oh my gosh, I think that’s your cousin,’” Sara recalls her friend saying. Hubbard replied, “Let me see, so they turned around the camera and he was just going.’”

Just another feather in the cap of a most accomplished family, one that includes Olympic gold medals, halls of fame recognition and the All-America honors Sara earned last season as a freshman.

“Growing up, we were always playing something,” said Hubbard, whose relative, Gary Hall Jr, won 10 Olympic swimming medals including five golds. “Everybody in my family plays a sport and we all have fun doing it. We’re very athletic and competitive, so I always knew that I would end up doing something.”

For Hubbard, that something was gymnastics, until it wasn’t.

“In high school, it was always a rule, if you didn’t do a sport, you had a job,” she said. “Pick what you want to do.”

While in high school in 2018, Hubbard hung up her leotards, intending to retire from the sport.

“I quit gymnastics completely,” she recalled. “I wasn’t enjoying it as much and didn’t have the same drive and I wasn’t having fun every day. I decided I was done and I thought I was going to be done forever.”

“If you fall out of love with the sport, you need to come back rejuvenated,” Auburn coach Jeff Graba said. “She was probably going through the motions which is a recipe for disaster in this sport.”

Per Hubbard family guidelines, Sara got a job as a restaurant hostess and barista.

“It was a good life experience having that job and working with people but there was a point where I realized I was so bored and I missed doing gymnastics,” she said.

In 2019, Hubbard returned, overcoming not only a year-long layoff but also surgery to repair a foot injury.

After an extended time away, could Hubbard regain her championship form? Sara answered that question quickly and emphatically.

“When I came back that first day, I was so excited,” she recalled. “I know people were going to look at me and be like, ‘Oh, she quit, she’s not going to be able to come back.’ I took that as a challenge.

“I came in and thought, watch this, I can still do it. I came back very quickly. I was already doing double tucks, tumbling and back to normal beam skills within the first week. I got back to competing that same year.”

“Really just exploded after that,” Graba said. “It sort of rekindled her passion.”

 

Hubbard’s quick and convincing comeback attracted attention from college gymnastics coaches, including Graba, who had worked with Sara’s parents at the gym Graba once co-owned in Minnesota.

Sara’s father, Bobby, won a Big Ten gymnastics championship at Minnesota and was inducted into the Minnesota Athletics Hall of Fame.

“We go way back,” said Graba, who invited Sara to investigate Auburn as she narrowed her college choices.

“I visited here and loved the campus,” said Hubbard, deciding on her visit that ‘I think I’m going to keep doing gymnastics. I thought I was done but I’m going to do it.”

Hubbard enrolled in Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business in the fall of 2021, majoring in business analytics.

She immediately earned a spot in the vault lineup and earned First Team All-America honors by finishing eighth at the 2022 NCAA Championship, helping Auburn reach the Final Four for the first time.

“After I started competing again, I grew a lot of confidence,” she said. “Scoring 10s in JO, I knew that vault was always a solid event for me. I’m a very competitive person. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it 100 percent.”

It’s a 27-hour drive to Auburn from Sara’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. Seeking a fresh experience and different weather than the desert, Hubbard found all that and more at Auburn.

“I’ve adopted this as a new home,” she said. “It’s not hard to stay here.

“Auburn just feels like home. Especially being so far away from Arizona, the support staff here, my friends and coaches, they all really feel like family. I never feel like I’m alone here. There’s always somebody to lean on no matter what I need.”

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer