“This is genuinely the worst feeling I’ve ever had.”

That’s how Avery Neff describes the moment last April, when the Utah Red Rocks fell just 0.125 points short of qualifying as a team for the 2026 NCAA Championships. The outcome snapped the program’s unprecedented 49-year streak of nationals appearances.

As captain of the powerhouse Utah women’s gymnastics team, Avery Neff has known what it feels like to win big. The former No. 1 overall recruit in her freshman class, Neff is already an 11-time All-American at just 20 years old.

But in 2026, the star experienced historic defeat.

A small deduction – a low landing, a hop – made the difference between her storied program’s 50th-straight trip to nationals and a historic low point.

“I remember the feeling that we had at regionals, thinking – ‘this is genuinely the worst feeling I’ve ever had,’” she reflected. For Neff and the Red Rocks, the initial pain cut deep. But over time, it developed into something stronger: hunger.

“We are never gonna let that happen again,” she vows. Freed from nearly 50 years of expectation, a new era for Utah Gymnastics begins. “We don’t have 49 years of pressure on our backs every single time we go out on the floor. It’s a refresh.”

While the reigning Big 12 All-Around Champion has unmistakably made a name for herself on the gymnastics floor, Neff is chasing more than perfect tens.

While most recruits were focused on landing their next skill, Neff was also focused on landing an online audience. Though her early posts centered on the recruit’s remarkable athletic ability, Neff wanted to share her journey with her 200,000+ followers: across athletics, academics and more.

“I want them to know all about me... I don’t want them to just think I’m ‘just a gymnast,’” she says. She settled on “switching her mindset.” If she wanted to be more than a gymnast, she had to share more than gymnastics. From then on, Neff decided to view social media as her online “personal journal.”

Ushered by her dad’s entrepreneurial influence, Neff set out to take the early NIL landscape by storm, using her journal as a launchpad. “There really is no blueprint on how to do this,” Neff remembers thinking. So, she created her own.

While most top gymnastics recruits land visits to the nation’s best NCAA programs, few shared their candid experiences. Hoping to share the person behind the leotard, Neff documented – and dropped hints about – her visits to top ranked Oklahoma, LSU, Florida and Alabama.

By the time the No. 1 recruit made her highly anticipated commitment announcement on social media, Neff generated buzz and fanfare rivaling the announcements of top football recruits. The gymnast saw an opportunity to share herself with the community, and she took it.

Venmo’s Money Moves & Giving Back

This year, Neff’s hunger for growth leads to a breakthrough partnership with Venmo’s “Money Moves” program. Launched alongside its second year of NIL partnerships with the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences, the initiative celebrates athletes’ NIL earnings and highlights how student-athletes are using that money to give back to their communities.

For Neff, a member of the 2026-2027 Money Moves class, the desire to give back made the partnership the “easiest” decision. “It’s turning gratitude into actual action, and you’re not gonna get to where you are today without the people and community surrounding you,” she reflects.

Neff’s desire to give back draws from the support she receives. As a star in the crown jewel program for Utah Athletics, Neff is no stranger to the support of 15,000+ fans, week after week, in the Huntsman Center. The youngest child in a tight-knit Utahn family, she also credits her parents with her desire to occasionally put heart over hustle.

For four years and counting, the Utah Red Rocks have partnered with the Sammy’s Buddy Program , a nonprofit that pairs students with disabilities alongside non-disabled peers, helping “create experiences that help students of all abilities learn and grow together.”

Together, Neff, her teammates, and local students partner up for meet-ups— including exciting “playdates” together in the gymnastics gym. Neff describes the experience as “beautiful.” “We can play games with them, just so they can feel a part of something,” she smiles. She understands that as she grows, so should her impact on her community.

Neff’s instinct for advocacy extends far beyond her own program. The All-American represents a broader shift in how women’s collegiate athletes use their platforms, and Venmo’s own numbers back it up.

Women’s Sports Visibility

Of the 2026-2027 Money Moves class, seven of nine athletes compete in women’s NCAA sports. Neff is joined by Kaitlyn Terry (Texas Tech Softball), Audi Crooks (Oklahoma Basketball), Jazzy Davidson (USC Basketball), Ava Jurevicus (Penn State Volleyball), Caroline Jurevicus (Penn State Volleyball) and Sienna Betts (UCLA Basketball).

Together the cohort is part of a category that, per Venmo, pulled in 28.3 billion viewing minutes in the first half of 2026, up 18% year-over-year.

With NCAA Gymnastics crowds and viewership breaking records across the country in 2026, Neff feels the buzz. She also felt it change. “I feel like when I was in high school, people didn’t really even know that there was D1 gymnastics,” she laughs.

“They only kind of knew it like, ‘oh, I’ve only watched gymnastics in the Olympics.’” Now, NCAA Gymnastics is a “big deal” she admits. The sport and its athletes finally feel legitimized.

Though no blueprint existed at the time, Neff credits early trailblazer Olivia Dunne (LSU) with ushering in that change. “[Olivia] was an amazing advocate for the gymnastics world and being able to exemplify that we are also D1 athletes ,” Neff adds. “She got the ball rolling.”

With Dunne as something of a blueprint, the opportunity is there for the taking. From social media hauls to recruiting trips and new tumbling passes, social media NIL “flows so naturally for gymnastics,” Neff says. Marketing her personal brand has also built invaluable skills that Neff plans to carry with her far beyond the Huntsman Center.

“If later down the road I want to work with [a company], I have those resources and I have those contacts and information.” Though she’s only 20, she’s looking onward, upward, and ahead. Neff aims to work hard and advocate for herself. As she puts it, she wants to “use these opportunities” to be successful down the road.

On the vault, bars, beam and floor, Neff hopes some successes are closer within reach – especially for the 2026-2027 edition of her beloved Utah Red Rocks.

She points to a summer trip to Lake Powell and a team cabin retreat as proof of how close this year’s group has become: “I generally would say that every single one of the girls is like one of my best friends,” she reflects.

Her outlook heading into the season is simple: “Let’s have fun. Let’s go win, and let’s do the job.”