Samantha Cerio, the former Auburn gymnast who suffered gruesome leg injuries during a competition in April, is now talking about how she managed to walk down the aisle at her wedding weeks later.
“Walking down the aisle was something that really made the wedding day that much sweeter,” she told ESPNW. “I’m really stubborn and want to accomplish goals that I set for myself, and I don’t know if our friends and family were all that surprised, but it was something that definitely helped make the wedding day even better.”
Before she exchanged vows with husband Trey Wood in Alabama on June 1, Cerio walked with crutches at her graduation.
"That was something I wasn't expecting, and I had a lot of people afterward who were like, 'Good job, I'm so happy you were able to do that, you're amazing, thank you for doing this,'" she told ESPNW.
Cerio said she was in awe of all the people who rallied around her after her injury.
The 22-year-old dislocated both of her knees, broke one leg and tore multiple ligaments after landing awkwardly during a floor routine at the NCAA Regionals in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on April 5.
"It wasn't just those that graduated. It was everyone. It was Auburn. It was the fact that the people of Auburn were able to see I was able to make this accomplishment and recover well," she said.
Cerio, who majored in aerospace engineering and landed a job with Boeing, has not shied away from talking about her injury. Speaking with TODAY in April, she explained that it was much worse than she initially thought.
"When I had landed that one, I felt like something was a little wrong, and I thought I had just hyperextended my knees until I looked down and that wasn't the case,'' she said. "When I saw what had happened, that's when the pain kind of started to set in, and it got worse. It was a big, 'Oh shoot, what just happened?'''
Video of the moment went viral, leading the young athlete to criticize people who shared the video.
In a Twitter message days later, she wrote that her pain was “not your entertainment.”
"I think it's made people more aware of what they see on the internet,'' she told TODAY.
"When you see something like that, you kind of want to watch it just to see what happens, because you're curious about it, but at the same time, you don't think about the people that it could impact."