Mary Jane Otto spent six years at Illinois, competing for the Orange and Blue from 2013-19. During that span, Otto secured All-America honors twice, won the bars title at the Big Ten Championships twice, and advanced to nationals as an individual qualifier in 2015.
Also named to the Academic All-Big Ten list five times, Otto earned First-Team All-Big Ten accolades in 2015, 2017, and 2019 and took home 28 event titles during his collegiate career.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What have you been up to since graduating from Illinois?
Mary Jane Otto: "I studied Kinesiology in undergrad, and then I got a master's in public health and a master's in sports management. Afterwards, I actually went on to self-teach myself graphic design and web design, so that's actually what I'm doing now. I love that. I also just had a baby last year, so I get to work from home doing that, which is really great, while raising my son. I also coach high school gymnastics, just seasonally from November to March, so that kind of scratches my itch to coach gymnastics and sometimes sub at our local club gyms. It all kind of worked out."
Q: How did being on the Illinois women's gymnastics team impact you?
MJO: "It's funny because people during our time at Illinois always told us, 'You don't realize how special that makes you being a student-athlete.' I didn't really understand that. I was like, 'Oh, everyone works hard. Everyone has a drive and determination.' I think being in the workforce and around some people who didn't have a sport, particularly like gymnastics, but I think our mental strength is just at a level that's unmatched because of the things that we had to go through, particularly Illinois with an institution with high academic caliber. We were a pretty decent gymnastics team, and a lot of our sports were top 25 in the nation, which I think we were in all my years competing there.
"Just having to balance those both at Illinois, while also pursuing a career, trying to figure out life, relationships, balancing the team aspect, balancing nutrition, and being in the weight room: All the opportunities that Illinois provides and support that they do prepare us. It was challenging, but there was support and it prepared us for the life that was to come and made us excel and be more prepared. Going back to that mental capacity, just being able to work through things, not get so destructive when bad things happen or we fail or make a mistake. Learning to pick ourselves up, and move on, and learn from it, and move forward, I've seen that as a skill. I'm very thankful for the experiences for sure. Illinois was just a great place to be."
Q: How did the Illinois women's gymnastics program shape you as a person?
MJO: "I think two things. I think the team and the program helped me become a person who was willing to learn and adapt. I think I saw that really help me when I didn't use my degrees and wanted to figure something out that could allow me to be a work-from-home mom one day. I literally had to learn and teach myself this new skill of graphic design, but I knew how to learn because I had grown to love to learn new things because of what I had to do in gymnastics. I had to learn new skills, and fine-tune new skills, and refine everything that I did, and keep learning because there was never a cap; you can never be perfect in gymnastics. You could, but a 10.0, a lot of times it wasn't perfect and there were still probably things you could do better. I think always striving for something more really helped me in the real world of always seeking to learn and not staying stagnant in what I'm doing. Even as a mom, I'm always thinking, 'What can I do better? How can I be a better mom? What are better foods that I can give my kid?' It's different avenues, but it's still that same concept of always trying to be the best version of myself and learning new things that can help that.
"I think the other way is the actual girls on the team. When you're in your four years, or in my case, six years of college, it can feel like, 'Oh, OK, I'm just here with my team, and we're doing this, whatever.' Now that I'm on the other side of that, I'm like, 'Wow, those girls that were on the team each year, and obviously it's a revolving door with new people each year, we went through things together that I literally won't go through with anyone else in life.' In those moments of the grueling training and super hard conditioning, we see the worst of each other, and the lowest of lows, and we're crying ugly tears and hunched over feeling like we're gonna vomit, just disgusting. But then we also see the best of ourselves when we're competing, and winning titles, and making it to nationals, and all these things. Having those shared experiences with my teammates, I may not talk to them every day, but we will always cherish that time together. The girls I do talk to, we pick up right where we left off. Those bonds of going through something so physically grueling together, I'm just never gonna have that with anyone else.
"I think those friendships and relationships are super important and super cool because I'm just not gonna get that in another place. I'm very thankful for those friendships and people like Karen Howell, or Giana O'Connor, or Sunny Kato, they are people that I look to and lean on in life. I might not talk to them every day, but if I really need something, I know that they are people who care for me, and know me so deeply, and will celebrate me and pick me up."
Q: What have been the biggest takeaways from your six years at Illinois?
MJO: "It's funny you're asking me these things now versus right after graduation because I would probably say different things. Now, I'd say my biggest takeaway from Illinois, well, OK, probably both things. First thing is just that gymnastics, while it was so important, it isn't life. There's so much more to life beyond those four or six years and to not put all my identity in what I'm doing in gymnastics because that's going to leave and it can be such a hole. If you use those years during gymnastics to also find other things you love and other things you have purpose and passion for, you'll see there's more to life.
"But with that, always be present, present in what you're doing and the years that you're in. You can always look to the future and say, 'Oh, I just want to be done with school,' or 'Oh, my body hurts. I just want to be done with gymnastics,' but I really appreciate where I am. There are times where I'm like, 'Oh, did I just fly by in my years there and really take advantage of the things that were available to me?' I know I did in some aspects, but of course, looking back, I'm like, 'Oh, I wish I would have done this and that, and probably stretched myself to meet other athletes or other non-athletes.'"
Q: Who has been or was your biggest influence through your gymnastics journey?
MJO: "I probably have a couple. I grew up in a family of five. I have four brothers, and my oldest brother played soccer in college. He actually played semi-pro a little bit, but I think I just saw him, as my oldest brother, work so hard as an athlete and all that he did. He just gave up so much to pursue that passion of his, and I think he was a big inspiration and support just to me as a person, but definitely as an athlete.
"I think on the team, I really looked up to Sunny Kato and Giana O'Connor. They were one and two years ahead of me, Giana one and Sunny two, but Sunny stayed for a fifth year, so it was awesome to have her for three years. They were awesome friends, but they also were great leaders on the team. They were that leader that's nice, and they value relationships, but they also get their work done and hold others accountable to get their work done. I really valued them and valued their example. As a young freshman for sure, I was like, 'Wow, I hope I can take parts of them and be like that when I'm older on the team.'"
Q: What was your fondest memory during your time at Illinois?
MJO: "Probably traveling, like there are so many traveling memories that are just so fun when you're on a bus with 14 other girls, and it just gets crazy and wild. It's just so fun because the most random things happen. Man, I don't know. I mean, this isn't necessarily a good memory, but it's funny for me and some other people to look back at. It was 2019, and it was just a normal bus ride. I have no idea where we're coming back, but the next week, in five days, we had big plans. We're just trying to get home, get some sleep, get ready for the week, and we stopped at Wendy's just to get some food super quick. And then we'd carry on, and literally, as we're getting home, everyone, maybe not everyone, but probably 70% of the team is like, 'Oh man, I'm not feeling too well.' And then this one girl rushes to the bathroom, and we're like, 'Oh, shoot, that doesn't look good.' We don't think about it, and we just all go home that night, trying to get some sleep. Then 50% of us are up at 3 a.m. texting each other, like, 'Oh my gosh, this isn't feeling good.'
Long story short, half of us ended up getting sick. We have the 24-hour flu. We don't practice for like three days because we're just down for the count. Natalie is rooming us, like sick people versus non-sick people for the hotel for Big Tens time. It was just funny. We're all just like, 'What the heck is this Big Tens gonna be like? We haven't done gymnastics in five days, like what in the world.'
We go to practice day. We do bare minimum, because we're still just trying to recuperate. Then Big Tens come, and we get second as a team, next to Michigan, which, for us, just felt like the win. That was the one of the years that I went to Big Tens on bars, and it was like, 'Who would've known that we all just had the flu and didn't practice for four days straight?' That was just something funny I always think about and look back on, and a lot of us like to joke about it. It was definitely an experience.
Q: Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
MJO: "I'm just super thankful for my Illinois experience and all the coaches that I got to learn from and get to know. They really each played a special part in my gymnastics and my growth as a person. You can take valuable things from each person and really create your own life trajectory with what you learn from people, so I'm just super thankful for that."
