Call it a Comeback – Oklahoma’s Fuzzy Benas is back, and better than ever

Call it a Comeback

By the Team at Inside Gymnastics

After a full year out of the gym, Oklahoma’s Fuzzy Benas is back, and better than ever

As his coach, Mark Williams, said recently, it’s OK to call it a comeback when you’ve been through as much in the last 18 months as Fuzzy Benas.

After winning national “Rookie of the Year” honors, Benas underwent shoulder surgery following his freshman NCAA season in 2022. Then, just as he came back from that injury, a pumpkin carving accident severed a nerve in his hand, requiring a four-hour surgical repair. Just two days after being medically cleared to resume training after his hand injury, Benas suffered an Achilles tendon tear while training on floor.

“Difficult doesn’t really describe it,” Benas says of his long road to recovery. “I admit there were some dark times, when I wondered if I’d be back here, but now I am and, yeah, it feels good.”

At January’s Rocky Mountain Open, Benas, competing in his first All-Around competition since April 2022, put an exclamation point on his comeback, earning the highest tally of his career, and the NCAA season to date, with a massive 85.2 six-event total.

“It was an amazing thing to watch,” coach Williams said of Benas’ performance. “Not only had he survived three major injuries, but he somehow found a way to get better. He’s not taking anything for granted at this point, and that really shows in his joy for gymnastics.”

Inside Gymnastics sat down with Benas after a recent training session to learn about his comeback, and where he hopes to go next…

Inside Gymnastics: Coming back from any serious injury is a massive undertaking, but to recover from three in succession and a full year out is truly another level of adversity. How did you handle that challenge, both mentally and physically? 

Fuzzy Benas: Yeah, it was a rough road. The shoulder surgery, back in summer of 2022, was planned — something we knew we had to get repaired, just to make sure I could withstand gymnastics going forward. Then, I didn’t even get fully cleared from that by the time of the pumpkin carving incident — as we now call it — where I cut my hand. That was a big, ‘Uh-oh’ moment, because at one point they said I might never get feeling back in my hand. So, it was this long process of doing everything doctors told me to, and hoping everything went according to plan. Then, when it did, two days after I got cleared from the hand injury, is when the Achilles injury happened.

Inside: What was the injury exactly? Your coach has said it didn’t require surgical repair.

Benas: I have the video of me tearing my Achilles if you want to see it. It’s pretty boring, actually. I felt, like, a stabbing pain when I took off, but I landed fine and just hopped off and sat down — trying to process it before everyone else even realized what happened. 

I didn’t tear the Achilles itself, instead I tore the tendon off the calf. They can’t put stitches through muscle, so repairing an injury like that surgically is extremely difficult — impossible, really, for an athlete. Instead, they left the less than 1% of it that was still attached and hoped, with specific rehab, that was enough to start the healing process. 

I, personally, had never heard of a gymnast using this recovery procedure before. I feel very lucky that I had one of the best Achilles and ankle specialists in the state, if not the country, who was willing to try this non-surgical approach, and get me back to a place where I could compete at the high level I want to, because other doctors might have told me it was impossible.

Inside: What did that process entail?

Benas: A lot of different, and very specific, rehab, which started pretty much immediately after the injury. The goal was not to let anything atrophy and jumpstart that healing process, as much as is possible. 

I admit there were some moments where I doubted the process. I wasn’t even allowed to walk until May. They let me start jogging in July, and from there it was a slow and steady progression — from jogging to sprints, to some light punching on trampoline. I wasn’t fully released to go all out until late September. At Championships in August, I was doing some of those dismounts for the very first time about a week before leaving, but it felt important for me to get back out there and do what I can, even if it wasn’t everything I wanted.

Inside: Do you feel like you’re 100% now?

Benas: I mean, at this exact moment, I’m just getting back into the gym following a full week with the flu, so I’m a little weak, but other than that, yeah, I feel like I’m there. I feel like the things that are different, are always going to be different — a permanent change I’m learning to adapt to. 

Inside: The physical is one thing, but the mental strain of being injured repeatedly is another. How have you dealt with that aspect of recovery?

Benas: Again, it was rough. I was pretty down after injuring my hand, because it felt so stupid on my part and like I was letting everyone, including myself, down. People told me not to feel that way, but I did. Then, to get almost all the way through that, only to have the Achilles happen. At that point, I knew I had no chance of doing anything in 2023, and there was a chance 2024 would be impossible, too. It was a lot.

I’d be lying if I said this being the end of my career never crossed my mind, but I really felt like I owed it to my team, and myself, to at least try and come back. I still had too much I wanted to do — my own goals and aspirations. It became about staying focused on what I wanted to do, not what I was going through.

Turning all those disappointments into a fire under me. To use the adversity as motivation. 

Inside: How did your teammates help you get through it all?

Benas: I honestly couldn’t have done it without their support in and out of the gym. I tried to find my own role when I couldn’t compete. Just crutching around supporting them, doing anything I could — moving mats, setting p-bars. Just cheering them on — which at OU is one of the biggest parts of competing, and something I love about this team.

Being here has made me a lot more expressive in the gym. In competitions I like to lock in, to be almost a machine. That’s how I was taught to compete growing up —don’t let any emotion, good or bad, effect the next event. But I’ve also really enjoyed that team aspect of hyping each other up.

Inside: Now that you’re back in competition, have you found any positives to all you went through? 

Benas: I mean, being realistic, the cons definitely outweigh the pros in this equation.

But I think the pros are that I’ve come back more motivated than I’ve ever been in my life. All along the process, as soon as I was allowed to do something, I’d just go all out and attack it with the goal of making it feel at least as good, if not better, than it did before I got hurt. 

I also have had a lot of time to think about my performance, from a mental standpoint.  When I couldn’t do gymnastics, I was thinking about how it felt, and how I could make everything better — how I could tweak this or that to improve the efficiency, technique, or consistency of a skill. 

Now that I have been through this, I also know that, mentally and physically, I can get through absolutely anything. 

Inside: Have you had to modify your goals after everything you went through?

Benas: Things got delayed a bit — I missed out on a lot of time I could be improving — but my goals are the same.

I don’t think anyone is expecting that much out of me this year — or at least they weren’t — so it would be nice to sort of show them that I’m back, better than ever.

As a personal goal, I’d love to compete 100% again—no missed routines for the team — as I did my freshman year. I really want to help this team move towards an NCAA title. Outside of OU, I’d like to make Olympic Trials, which, in my mind, starts by performing well at Winter Cup. 

I think I’ve had a little bit of a reputation of performing very well at OU meets, and not as well when it’s just for myself, so I’m trying to take that team mentality into competing for myself. It sounds strange, but I tend to compete better, the more pressure I’m under. 

I feel like I’m finally growing up — I know some people wonder what took me so long (laughs) — but a big part of that is Oklahoma, and the college experience. I might not be growing physically, but mentally and maturity-wise? Definitely.

Inside: What led you to Oklahoma?

Benas: OU was my dream school since I was a kid, ever since I came here for my first Region III camp. Just seeing the facility and getting to know the people. I didn’t really care about NCAA gymnastics back then, but after that I started watching all the OU meets, and just looking at their track record, and all the guys that came through the program. 

Just seeing the success the program and its athletes have had for so many years, solidified me wanting to come here to OU. I wanted to be a part of that.

Inside: What makes this 2024 Oklahoma team special?

Benas: This is the closest team I’ve been a part of, just in terms of camaraderie —how much we hang out outside the gym, and what we do inside the gym. I think we’re also a better, more positive team, in terms of supporting and encouraging each other to improve. It feels like I’ve got not just four coaches, but twenty other guys looking out for me, and my gymnastics, every single day in training.

Inside: After a fourth-place finish in 2023, and being ranked fourth in the pre-season poll, does Oklahoma feel like they’ve got something to prove?

Benas: Fourth place was not a good feeling. Our goal is to make sure we don’t have that feeling again. 

Don’t misunderstand — being fourth in the country is no small feat, but that’s not our goal. That’s not the OU standard, after having been in the Top 3 for 20-something years. 

We’re trying to approach that as positive motivation, not let it be a negative influence that weighs us down. Instead of looking at it like, ‘We sucked,’ we took it as, ‘There’s a change that needs to be made here.’ 

We took a step back as a whole team, having multiple meetings that were just us, talking about changes we thought needed to happen. We did some deep thinking about what we did differently last year, compared to previous years, and what we think was the main cause of not performing the way we wanted to at the end of the season. 

We came to the coaches with those findings and worked on different training plans, and it all seems to be coming together. It feels like we’re moving in the right direction as a team.

Inside: Your dad, Adam, was part of Penn State’s 2000 National Championship team, and your mom, Shannon (nee Brown), was a Big 12 champ at Missouri, so is it safe to assume they were your gateway into the sport?

Benas: Yeah, both my parents were D1 athletes. They met at Woodward East. My dad was still training when I was little, and he’d take me to gym with him. He’d make this little cubicle out of mats and just let me loose. So, I’ve been doing gymnastics since before I can even remember, so I didn’t really choose the sport, but I did make a conscious choice that I wanted to stay in it. 

Both my younger brothers also do gymnastics. My middle brother, Landon, just started at Greenville this year and seems to be doing well, so I’m super happy for him. And our youngest brother, Taybor, is more talented than both of us, he’s just got to get the work ethic part figured out. But he’s young, so there’s lots of time for that. 

Inside: And, finally, the million-dollar question: How’d you get the nickname Fuzzy?

Benas: My parents were getting a sonogram, and wanted to know my gender, but the nurse said the picture was “too fuzzy” to tell, so they started calling me that before I was even born, and the name stuck. 

It was almost my legal name, but my grandma wouldn’t let that happen. She thought Fuzzy was “too goofy,” but I’ve always been called Fuzzy by everyone except my grandma. When I went to Berlin for a junior meet, every time they said ‘Aydon Benas,’ it took me a minute to realize they meant me.

I was considering changing my name legally to Fuzzy when I turned 18, but my grandma said that would break her heart, so I couldn’t do it. She’s the only one who can call me Aydon anytime.

Photos by OU Athletics and courtesy of the Benas Family

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