When JerQuavia Henderson put on her leotard for Iowa’s Black and Gold intrasquad in December 2025, it wasn’t just a fashion statement. It was a celebration of the last time Henderson had competed, nearly 1000 days earlier, in the very same leotard. It was kismet.
Henderson’s NCAA gymnastics journey has been far from conventional. Her career has spanned seven years, two Achilles ruptures, and an overhaul of the Iowa coaching staff. She’s gone from being a freshman sidelined with injury to the seasoned leader of her team. Most importantly, she’s learned a lot about herself along the way.
Watching Henderson dance her heart out in her floor routines and cheer on her teammates from the sidelines, it’s difficult to imagine her as shy, but that’s exactly how she describes her freshman-year self. After dedicating her entire life to gymnastics, Henderson felt she didn’t know who she was outside the sport, causing her to struggle expressing herself and letting loose in the gym. It was Iowa gymnast Clair Kaji, who graduated in 2022, who helped her come out of her shell.
During Henderson’s first week on campus, Kaji took her out for lunch. Henderson expected to talk gymnastics, but Kaji wasn’t interested in that. She wanted to know who Henderson was outside the gym. “She was really the first person to get to know me outside of my sport and to really want to understand what makes me tick,” Henderson said.
It was Kaji who encouraged Henderson to “dance bigger” and feel more comfortable performing in front of a crowd. After redshirting her freshman season due to an Achilles rupture, Henderson came back strong and quickly gained recognition for her dynamic tumbling and high-energy performances – all with the guidance and support of Kaji. After a beam fall at an away quad meet during the 2021 season, Henderson panicked: she didn’t want to go back on the competition floor, and planned to scratch her remaining events. It was a pep talk from Kaji that gave Henderson the will to keep fighting. “I never really had someone encourage me and push me like that just to be the best version of myself for myself,” Henderson said, reflecting on the meet. The push from Kaji helped, and Henderson went on to set a career-high 9.925 on vault that night.
Those lessons stayed with Henderson throughout a long and successful career. She holds Iowa’s floor score record with five scores of 9.975, was the Big Ten floor champion in 2023, and helped the Hawkeyes set a new all-time program record of 197.225 this February. The highs throughout her career have been stellar, but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
The pressure of performance started to take a toll on Henderson’s body and mind at the start of her senior year. She dealt with medical complications after a sacroiliac joint injection, and her passion for the sport was starting to fade. “I’ve always been a very big advocate for mental health,” she said, “and I realized that during that time, I wasn’t taking my own advice.” In January 2024, with eligibility remaining, Henderson announced that she would be leaving the Iowa team to pursue opportunities outside of gymnastics. The decision to step away was hard, but she had a feeling the break would be temporary.
Henderson stayed busy: she got a full-time job as a mental health counselor in Iowa City and spent her evenings coaching at a local gym. The day job gave her a look into what she calls “the real world” outside of gymnastics, and coaching allowed her to stay connected to the sport.
Being a mentor to young athletes helped Henderson heal her relationship with gymnastics. She used her experience in the sport to influence her coaching style, knowing that things can be done differently – without putting too much pressure on yourself. “I love […] instilling the values and things that I was taught, you know, being older. So that they don’t have to go down those rabbit holes [that I did],” she said.
As is often the case with gymnasts, coaching didn’t stay just coaching for long. Henderson played around on the equipment and eventually found herself doing bars sequences and acro series on beam. The plan to rediscover her passion for gymnastics had worked: “During that year off, I found that [joy] again. I found that five-year-old self that’s just, like, oh, my gosh, this is so much fun,” she said.
A lot changed at Iowa during Henderson’s time away. After former head coach Larissa Libby resigned in May 2024 following an investigation into the program’s environment under her leadership, Iowa hired an entirely new coaching staff, with Jen Llewellyn at the helm.
What started as a visit to the gym during a summer camp turned into a conversation about Henderson’s desire to train for elite gymnastics, and she eventually decided to join the Iowa roster for the 2025 season. It was a transition year for the program, but Henderson handled it with grace. Llewellyn said it was clear from the start that Henderson was “in it for the long haul, for the team.”
While preparing for the 2025 season, Henderson faced yet another obstacle: a second Achilles rupture, this time on her other leg. It was a major setback to a long-awaited comeback, but she didn’t let it faze her. Her role on the team wasn’t going to be what she had expected, but she knew how she wanted to support the GymHawks. “My job is to be the annoying, loud, crazy teammate, shaking pom poms at every meet, and moving mats and doing whatever I can,” she said.
The GymHawks have a motto: “iron sharpens iron”. It keeps them pushing each other to greater heights, for the good of the team. Llewellyn says it reminds athletes that “you still bring so much value with who you are as a human being, who you are as a teammate, your work ethic, your leading by example, and just grinding it out, even if you’re not in a lineup spot.”
Leading by example is exactly what Henderson did as she worked through her recovery and eventual comeback. Llewellyn speaks highly of Henderson’s contributions to the team, even from the sidelines. “She was very intentional in how she went about it […] she knew she wanted to earn the team’s respect,” she said.
Henderson worked hard for that respect: perhaps in the same way that Kaji earned her respect all those years ago. It was the maturity and mental clarity she gained during her year off that helped her set an example for her teammates despite the adversity she was facing. Llewellyn went on to say that “it was really mature of her to be able to have that awareness of knowing what she can bring, but having those boundaries to say ‘let me be an example through how I take care of myself and get back to gymnastics and showing that I’m committed to this long-term’.
Henderson is humble: she hesitates to say whether she’s been able to help other gymnasts the same way Kaji once helped her. But Iowa fifth-year senior Marissa Rojas proudly speaks to the impact Henderson has had on her throughout her career.
“I watched her before coming [to Iowa], and I was just in awe of her and everything that she did. And then coming here and getting to grow close to her and having her on the team all five of my years is something so special, and I’m really grateful for her because she’s helped me to grow in so many ways […] I feel like she has brought something out of me that I would never have been able to do without her,” Rojas said.
Like Henderson, Rojas sat out the 2025 season with an Achilles injury. She says Henderson’s support played a significant role in her recovery process, especially since it was Henderson’s second experience with this kind of injury.
“I felt like we were able to go through a lot of similar rehab,” said Rojas. “She was a couple months ahead of me in that process, so I was able to see what she was doing, and then later on I was able to do it, which helped me.”
Coming back from an Achilles rupture is difficult – something Henderson knows all too well, and she used that experience to support Rojas in their shared comeback season. Rojas put up a 9.875 on beam in only her second routine back from injury, and she credits Henderson with keeping her calm and focused on the competition floor.
“She comes up to me before I compete my beam or bar routine and she knows exactly what to say and what’s gonna get me into the right mindset and headspace,” said Rojas. “If I had something a little bit off in warmup, she knows what to say to get me out of that little rut.”
In 2026, Henderson feels that she’s in the best shape of her career – “physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.” As much as she shines as a leader and mentor, her contributions on the competition floor can’t be overlooked. She got back her Yurchenko one-and-a-half vault and her sky-high full-in on floor, and has posted scores of 9.900 on both events. She competed on three events on the way to Iowa, breaking its program record in front of a sold-out home crowd. After she graduates, her time as a gymnast won’t be done – Henderson plans to make a run at elite gymnastics, representing the Bahamas. She’s waiting until the end of the college season before sharing more details with the public, but she’s hard at work studying the FIG code of points and planning a competition schedule. As brilliant as Henderson is, it’s difficult to imagine her getting even better – but Llewellyn says “she hasn’t reached her peak yet.”
Through her work ethic and passion for gymnastics, Henderson fosters a culture at Iowa that is serious but supportive. The GymHawks train hard, they push each other to be their best, and they want to win – but at the end of the day, there are more important things in life than their sport. “It’s just gymnastics and it’s not that deep,” said Henderson. “You know, we’re going to go have sushi after and the world’s not going to end.”
That mindset – instilled in her by Kaji, enriched by her year off, and now passed onto other Iowa gymnasts – is what allows Henderson to not only achieve greatness on her own, but also elevate her team to that level. “Iron sharpens iron” is more than just a team motto to her: it’s something she embodies every day, both in and out of the gym.
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Article by Sophie Poirier
