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Sunisa “Suni” Lee has accomplished more at 19 years old than many do in an entire lifetime.
Lee won an all-around gold medal as part of Team USA’s gymnastics squad at the Tokyo Olympics last summer and enrolled at Auburn University where she would win an NCAA championship on the balance beam, an SEC championship at bars and finish runner-up in all-around. Not to mention she was named an NCAA First-Team All-American, SEC Freshman of the Year and an All-SEC member in her first year with the Tigers.
Lee can make it look easy on the gymnastics floor – whether it is on the beam or on the bars – but she told Fox News Digital in a recent interview she felt more pressure to stand out because of her success at the Olympics.
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Sunisa Lee, of United States, reacts as she poses for a picture after winning the gold medal in the artistic gymnastics women’s all-around final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, July 29, 2021, in Tokyo.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
“I think in the beginning of the season, I actually didn’t put any pressure on myself, and I was enjoying it. But I think toward the end of the season, I kind of let social media get to my head a little bit and that’s when I started putting a lot of pressure on myself and I felt like I was kind of deteriorating throughout the season,” Lee said. “Now, I’m just kind of letting my body heal and my mind heal and I’m ready to get back out there and compete again.”
Lee said when she first arrived at Auburn, she came with the celebrity of being a gold medalist and that going to school at first was not an easy experience.
“I think it was a really hard transition for me because coming off the Olympics I was still very, I’d say, relevant going into school. So, when I got to school, it was very busy and then it was very hard to kind of mentally stay in a good place because I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. Like, I couldn’t go out in public and even eat without people taking pictures of me,” Lee told Fox News Digital.
FLASHBACK: SUNI LEE WINS OLYMPIC GOLD IN GYMNASTICS INDIVIDUAL ALL-AROUND
Sunisa Lee of the Auburn Tigers competes in the floor exercise during the Division I Womens Gymnastics Championship held at Dickies Arena on April 16, 2022 in Fort Worth, Texas.
(C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
“It was just something that I had to get used to, so the transition was very difficult. But once I got into the hang of things it started getting a lot easier. And then having the support from like my team and my coaches and my family like really helped a lot because they just always made sure that I was OK.”
When she is not in the gym training, Lee said she enjoys shopping and hanging out with friends. Additionally, she has also learned how to balance the stresses of everyday life, schoolwork and studying and the pressures of competing at the high level in college athletics.
“I think, for me, it’s really important to take advantage of all the opportunities that I get because all these opportunities are once in a lifetime and that’s what makes everything so exciting. But having to balance it out has been probably something I’m still trying to learn,” she said. “I’ve just been trying to learn to use a planner a lot, planning out my week knowing what I have to do and just making sure that I’m staying forced on the things that I need to get done.
FLASHBACK: SUNI LEE’S FAMILY GOES WILD WATCHING OLYMPIC DAUGHTER WIN GOLD
“My coach told me something that stuck with me so much and has helped my mental state and helped with balancing everything in my life right now. He basically told me to keep the gym in the gym. Basically, I don’t think about gymnastics when I’m outside of the gym because it will consume me. And when I get in the gym, nothing else matters – it’s only what I’m doing at that moment. “It’s like a constant state of meditation either way, pushing thoughts about the gym out of my mind when I’m outside of the gym and then pushing thoughts about life outside my mind when I’m in the gym.”
One thing Lee does not have to worry too much about anymore is her smile, recently partnering with Invisalign. She told Fox News Digital she had braces for six months after the Olympics and had a feeling switching to Invisalign could be the better route for when she started college.
Since then, she said her smile “has gotten a lot better and I’m so grateful.”
Olympian gymnast Sunisa Lee throws out the first pitch prior to the game between the Minnesota Twins and Toronto Blue Jays on August 5, 2022 at Target Field in Minneapolis.
(Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
“I’ve always been really self-conscious of my smile. I would say if you want a big confidence booster, less trips to the dentist for your treatment, then I think you should get Invisalign because they’re just so great,” she added.
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Lee started her sophomore year with Auburn in the middle of August and is preparing for another run to the NCAAs with her Auburn team. She said the goal is to take it one meet at a time and not look ahead too far into the season given all the success they had last year.
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