COLUMBIA, Mo. — Two Mizzou athletes, two comebacks.
Wrestler Keegan O’Toole had the kind of injury that keeps most athletes on the shelf for a year but no plans to let that get in the way of his quest for silverware. Helen Hu had ground herself through recovery from an ACL tear, walking away from gymnastics with nothing left in the tank.
Both came back to their sports in different ways, and both made the most of it, putting together the most captivating performances by Missouri athletes in the 2024-25 sports cycle. Their comebacks — and the heights that came with them — make them the Post-Dispatch’s choices for MU men’s and women’s athlete of the year, part of the newspaper’s annual honors capping the year in sports at the school.
Men’s Athlete of the Year: O’Toole, wrestling
A couple of weeks after finishing as the Big 12 champion and national runner-up at 174 pounds, O’Toole posted a picture from a hospital bed, his left knee bandaged and stabilized with a beefy brace.
People are also reading…
He’d had finally had surgery to repair a torn ACL, but only after wrestling — in dominant fashion — through the normally debilitating injury.
O’Toole first hurt the knee during a mid-November meet at Virginia Tech, when he felt a little pop somewhere inside the joint.
“It kind of hurt for a minute, but the pain went away,” he told FloWrestling. “I just thought that I popped my calf or something.”
About a month later, O’Toole felt an odder sensation in that knee during a match: something he described as the tissue connecting bones finally giving way. The next morning, he needed help getting out of bed. An MRI revealed he’d torn his ACL.
The immediate option, which most athletes probably would’ve taken, was to undergo surgery to repair the ligament. That would’ve ended O’Toole’s season, though, and he wanted no such thing.
Instead, he stopped competing for two months but put off surgery. As swelling went down in the injured knee, he started to get some strength back. O’Toole returned for the final dual of the regular season, a short run-up to the postseason.
He looked neither rusty nor badly injured during the Big 12 championships, winning all four of his matches en route to a conference title. He then went 4-1 at the NCAA Championships, which was good for second place and an All-American nod — the fifth of his career.
All that, with a torn ACL.
“I still had fun,” O’Toole said.
Shortly after his surgery, Mizzou coach Brian Smith announced that O’Toole has been hired as an assistant.
In the running: Triple jumper Jonathan Seremes won a national title with a personal-best 17.04-meter effort at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship in March. … Football right tackle Armand Membou was Mizzou’s highest-selected player in the NFL draft in more than a decade. … Men’s basketball’s Mark Mitchell earned third-team All-SEC honors while leading the team in scoring, and Caleb Grill was the league’s Sixth Man of the Year after an incredible 3-point shooting run.
Women’s Athlete of the Year: Hu, gymnastics
The first time Helen Hu left Mizzou gymnastics, she was burned out and hurting. The second time she did so, she was a national champion. It was a good thing she came back in between.
Hu had been one of the Tigers’ best gymnasts the first time around, returning from an ACL injury to star on the balance beam. But she’d had enough after the 2023 season, in which she earned second-team All-American honors but no perfect 10 score.
After a year of globetrotting around Central America, Europe and Asia, gymnastics coach Shannon Welker pitched Hu, back in Columbia for a former teammate’s wedding, the idea of returning to use her final year of eligibility.
“I took it as a joke,” Hu said, but it wasn’t.
She earned her elusive 10 during a meet at Oklahoma, then added another in the regular-season finale at Arkansas. Hu then added another during the second round of the NCAA Tournament, driving the Tigers into the late stages of the postseason by closing out meets with clutch routines.
Hu won the national beam title at the NCAA Championships, where Missouri finished third in the team competition.
“When I decided to come back, I did not have it in my mind to accomplish so much that I did this year,” she said. “It was really quite a shock.”
In the running: Volleyball outside hitter Mychael Vernon was named a third-team All-American after ranking third in the SEC in kills. … Gymnasts Elise Tisler and Mara Titarsolej joined Hu as first-team All-Americans. … Softball catcher Julia Crenshaw made the All-SEC first team after leading the Tigers with a .343 batting average and sound defensive work.
Coach of the Year: Welker, gymnastics
In the immediate aftermath of Mizzou gymnastics advancing narrowly out of an NCAA Championship semifinal and into the finals for the first time in program history, Welker was running late to his news conference.
“Sorry I’m late,” he joked to reporters on site in Fort Worth, Texas. “I was renegotiating my contract.”
He did get a new contract with Missouri, albeit near the start of a 2025 season that goes down as one of the most impressive in recent MU athletics history. It’s much deserved for the coach running the school’s highest-performing team at present.
Welker’s 12th season coaching the Tigers netted the aforementioned third-place finish, plus the program’s first national champion (Hu), most perfect 10s in a season (five) and first team score of 198 in a meet. He built that success through recruitment and development of a senior class that made two runs to the NCAA Championships, well-timed transfers and wooing Hu out of retirement for one more year — the kind of roster building necessary in today’s college sports environment.
Welker was named both the national gymnastics and SEC coach of the year for his efforts.
In the running: Volleyball coach Dawn Sullivan captured regional coach of the year honors after leading the Tigers to the Sweet 16 in her second season. … Eli Drinkwitz became the second-ever MU football coach to win 10-plus games in back-to-back seasons. … Dennis Gates brought Mizzou men’s basketball back to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in his three years at the helm.
