Rick and Linda Aeder knew their daughter Stefanie was going to be athletically minded early on. The Aeders placed their daughter in a number of sports to make sure she had a taste of everything.

“She was always a natural,” said mother Linda Aeder. “I admire her dedication to what she loves and her competitive spirit. She’s just a really great kid.”

Stefanie Aeder was born in Boise, Idaho, where she got her first taste of gymnastics at 18 months old in a program designed for small children.

At the age of 3, she moved from Boise to Portland, where she spent the next 15 years of her life before coming to Sacramento State and becoming a Hornet.

Now at 22, the 5-foot-2 senior Stefanie Aeder is co-captain of the Sacramento State gymnastics team and is one of three Hornets headed to the NCAA’s West Regionals; however, her rise to the top has not been the easiest.

“Her story is about hard work and overcoming injuries,” said gymnastics Head Coach Kim Hughes.

During the summer between seventh and eighth grades, a 13-year-old Aeder badly sprained her right wrist during a vault practice. She decided to continue practicing with the injury, which forced her to tumble with a clinched fist.

“I did everything on my left hand for four months,” Aeder said. “And the day I got the OK to go back, I was tumbling and my back started hurting like crazy.”

Her back became overdeveloped on the left side from compensating for the imbalance on her tumbles. To this day, she experiences tremendous back pain. The pain even became so great that she turned in her leotard and quit gymnastics her freshman year of high school.

After recuperating for much of that year she returned to the sport. Her troubles with injuries were not over yet, though.

This time Aeder dislocated her elbow.

In warm-up a vault routine during her junior year of high school, she over rotated her left arm and the elbow slid out of place.

“I never needed surgery, but I was put in a cast for nine weeks,” Aeder said, “and eventually after seven or eight months I was able to compete again.”

However, during her freshman year as a Hornet, she re-injured her elbow.

Pain would fill her arm every time she went down on her left hand. Aeder tried to push past the pain and compensate more with her wrist, but again overcompensation got the best of her.

So much damage was done to her arm that she required surgery on both her elbow and wrist during her sophomore year of college. She still scored 9.875 three times and helped the Hornets win the conference title in 2002.

In her junior year at Sac State in 2004, Aeder qualified to compete in the NCAA’s West Regional floor exercise, where she scored a 9.825. She helped the team to a 14-10-1 season, during which she set the school record on the floor with a score of 9.950 and recorded ten scores above 9.800 and found time to become an all-conference all-academic pick in 2004.

This season Aeder scored above 9.700 in 12 of the 13 total meets, and scored at or above 9.900 four times. She has won the floor title eight separate times this season, including at this year’s Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference championships.

One of Aeder’s two event losses came against UCLA; the Bruins have taken the last two Division I national titles and has several Olympians on the team.

On April 9, Aeder and two other Hornets will rotate with UCLA in the West Regional meet in Seattle.

It’s going to be tough because it will probably be my last time doing the floor, Aeder said.”I’m just going to go out and have fun with it.”

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Brad Alexander can be reached at [email protected]