3 days ago
From Tumbling To Trending – The NCAA Gymnast Who Took Social Media By Storm
If you watched Team USA win gold in women's gymnastics at the 2024 Olympics, odds are, you've clicked on an Instagram post from Planet of Gymnastics. With over 350,000 followers and stratospheric online reach, the page is a one-stop shop for all things gymnastics.
Founded by former Division I gymnast Hannah Oliveros, the page recently unseated Inside Gymnastics as Instagram's most followed gymnastics media source.
But here's what's most impressive—Planet of Gymnastics is less than two years old. In a case study of unprecedented exponential growth, Oliveros' page went from industry unknown to industry leader in under a year.
Hannah Oliveros' life revolved around gymnastics from a young age. At just 14, she began courting recruitment prospects from Division I programs nationwide. One year later, she committed to compete for The Ohio State University.
'I kind of had my whole life planned out for the foreseeable future,' she says, and through the first week on the competition floor as a Buckeye, everything was going to plan. Oliveros scored a huge 9.900 on beam in her collegiate debut, winning the event and posting the highest score of any Buckeye that weekend.
The Illinois native was promptly named Big Ten Freshman of the Week, immediately designating the rookie as a budding NCAA star and a freshman to watch.
Then, ten days later, she tore her Achilles tendon.
The Achilles tear was devastating, marking 'uncharted waters' for Oliveros. She had never been seriously hurt before, and the blunt timing of the injury left her feeling lost. 'I didn't know what to do without gymnastics," she tells me.
While grappling with her injury and return to the competitive stage, Oliveros was determined to find a way to stay involved on her team. After significant deliberation, the psychology major settled on a newfound target: social media.
'I asked if I could just run our Ohio State Women's Gymnastics page.' Unsurprisingly, her team's administrators said yes; the rest was history. Oliveros promptly changed her major to communication technology and flipped headfirst into the social media scene.
Her growing fascination with digital storytelling soon translated into real-world experience. In the summer following her sophomore year, she landed an internship with Ohio State Athletics.
While on the team, Oliveros helped launch the official TikTok for Ohio State Athletics, growing the page from zero to nearly 100,000 followers in months. Oliveros then handled Ohio State Football's Instagram stories and TikTok posts, filming live from the field. Eventually, her road led to a dream internship with NBC Sports.
At this point, it was all for the love of the game(s). 'I started doing a ton of things in digital that I thought were just like a hobby – for fun,' she says. But after her junior year, new injuries forced the gymnast to get serious about her future.
After receiving directives for six required surgeries on both of her hips, Oliveros made the difficult decision to medically retire from gymnastics in the summer of 2023.
'I went through a really rough patch," she says. 'That's when all of my plans just stopped…I knew what I was going to do for the past six years, and suddenly I didn't.' She knew one thing – she would be graduating soon, and like all graduates, she would need to get started on a career.
One of many gymnasts forced to medically retire, Oliveros would later find common ground with former Florida Gator gymnast Morgan Hurd. The World Champion gymnast made the difficult decision to medically retire from gymnastics in 2024, and has since found their calling in sports photography.
Like Hurd, Oliveros looked to channel her elite athletic drive into a new outlet.
With more than a decade of gymnastics experience under her belt and a flourishing social media resume, the solution was obvious to Oliveros' boyfriend, Nathan Pechar, a former employee with House of Highlights and fellow social media creator.
This push, coupled with her growing confidence, planted the seed for what would become Planet of Gymnastics. At first, she balked. However, her love for gymnastics won out. 'I have nothing else better to do,' she thought.
In a parking lot after one of her many doctor's appointments, Oliveros finally hit send on Planet of Gymnastics. At first, she was 'embarrassed' by the page, determined to keep her identity hidden from the masses.
'If I hit 100,000 followers, then maybe I'll say who I am,' she swore to herself. She did not have to keep the promise for long.
In the first month, the page grew from zero to 10,000 followers. Just under three months later, she hit the magic number: 100,000. The night she hit 100,000, Oliveros' mom stayed up with her daughter, repeatedly refreshing the page until they met their goal. Today, she has 350,000+ and counting.
With her page's debut in late 2023, Planet of Gymnastics quickly became a go-to gymnastics news source for nearly half a million new and established fans.
In an Olympic year, the need for content was staggering. Oliveros often posted upwards of twenty times daily, working late into the night, and her boyfriend assisted with all graphic design. Despite the seemingly endless demand, the quality of the page's content remains a core tenet.
First and foremost, Oliveros wanted to provide a positive voice covering the gymnastics scene. 'I really wanted people to feel like they were valued in the sport."
'I feel like, especially in NCAA just a few years ago, if you weren't the star, then you didn't get any coverage,' she tells me. 'I just wanted (gymnasts) to realize that what they're doing is meaningful.'
She also saw an opportunity for growth in gymnastics coverage. 'I realized that gymnastics didn't have any sort of social media like an NFL or ESPN,' she told me.
Focused on increasing the accessibility of her sport, she vowed to deliver constant, real-time content for followers that expanded beyond the sport's top names.
This includes interacting with and highlighting user-generated content from the active and opinionated online gymnastics community, affectionately called 'The Gymternet.'
As a result, Planet of Gymnastics breaks gymnastics news while simultaneously broadcasting the community's reaction, often pairing industry updates with screenshots of quippy tweets from Gymternet users on X.
Oliveros' page is community-centered: by a gymnast and made for gymnasts.
This tenet expanded further in January with a new and unprecedented segment. Oliveros again flexed her social media muscle with exclusive 'Behind The Scenes' (BTS) and 'Day In The Life' content from top NCAA gymnasts.
Instead of generating organic content, Oliveros handed the phone to two gymnasts at a time, one on each team slated to compete in an NCAA dual meet. February 7th's post, featuring Arkansas gymnast Mati Waligora and Oklahoma NCAA Champion Faith Torrez, garnered an overwhelmingly positive reception from fans and athletes alike.
This authentic, community-first approach didn't go unnoticed. Soon, some of the sport's biggest stars took notice, from McKayla Maroney to Sunisa Lee, Gabby Douglas, and Oliveros' favorite gymnast, Simone Biles.
At times, her posts' reach went fully mainstream, with internationally recognized celebrities like SZA and Khloe Kardashian sharing her content.
For her, these are the 'I made it moments.' Surely, there will be more to come.
With a jam-packed opening year of NCAA and Olympic coverage under her belt, Oliveros now sets her sights on covering the 2025 elite gymnastics season and preparing for the 2026 NCAA Gymnastics season.
Though she hopes to appear as a media member at upcoming elite and NCAA meets, event organizers have rejected her prior credential requests.
Despite these challenges, Oliveros remains undeterred. The social media trailblazer uses the rejections as 'fuel" to push her content strategy to the next level. 'We'll see how it plays out,' she says. 'I'd love to be at meets at some point."
With the eyes of nearly half a million followers at her fingertips and strategy geared towards the growth of the sport, Planet of Gymnastics and Hannah Oliveros have earned their seat at the table – whether it's in the press box or not.
