Penn State women's gymnast Sarah DiPasquale had it all until one horrific day changed her entire life.

That day came at the end of her freshman year.

DiPasquale was working on her floor routines just like any other day, when it happened.

"I was training on floor and I was doing a front flip with one-and-a-half twists, and I didn't quite finish it all the way and my knee kind of turned in and popped," DiPasquale said. "I kind of limped back and was like, 'Oh, this isn't too good.' "

The trainer took a look at her knee and knew that it wasn't good.

She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and needed to have surgery to repair the damage and get back in the gym.

"I had to get surgery two or three weeks later and [the doctors] had to repair one of my meniscus and shave off a piece of the other one, plus repair my ACL," DiPasquale said.

After going through a successful knee surgery, DiPasquale hoped to return to competition as soon as her knee healed.

"The basic [training] went fine, but when I tried to train hard again, I was getting really bad tendonitis in my patella tendon," DiPasquale said. "So we tried to do taping and braces and none of it really worked."

However, as time would tell, her knee did not cooperate.

"It was getting to a point where it really hurt to walk around, so I went back to have another procedure done to relieve me of the tendonitis in my tendon, and it did not help."

As time ticked away, DiPasquale became really excited to get back in the lineup her junior year, but the frustration would overwhelm her.

"The frustration level got worse and worse," DiPasquale said. "First I took two weeks off of not training at all and it was really hard, but it came down to the point where I was like, 'Well, I want to be able to walk normally when I get older, so I think I am going to hang it up now.' "

Just like that, Sarah DiPasquale's gymnastics career came to an end.

"There are no pros, so when they come here their freshman year, they know four years and I'm done. No professional, no NFL, no NBA, no 'I'm getting drafted' ... this is it," Penn State women's gymnastics assistant coach Jessica Bastardi said. "To see her dream be ended early, it is just really, really heartbreaking to see her have to accept it."

After three knee surgeries and maybe more in the future, DiPasquale has turned her focus from competing to coaching.

Besides giving helpful tips to her fellow gymnasts, the 21-year-old senior from Bloomsburg, constructed some of the new balance beam choreography, worked on some of the new floor routines, created all the new floor music, and also arranged the team's unique warm-up dance music.

"It's great to see her actively involved with the team," Penn State women's gymnastics coach Steve Shephard said. "She has got a lot of respect from her peers in terms of her gymnastics background. We are happy she stayed actively involved with the team."

Before coming to Penn State, DiPasquale had established herself as a national gymnast. She competed on the level 10 national team and then went on to the elite level national team.

"I competed for three years at the elite level, which is what you see on TV, except I was not old enough to compete with those people," DiPasquale said.

All of the success that she had obtained so far carried over to her junior year in high school, where she was being heavily recruited by the University of Arizona, Michigan, West Virginia and Penn State.

"She was a local Pennsylvania kid and she was being highly sought after by a lot of other schools," Shephard said. "We thought she fit the profile of the student athlete we look for."

With that in mind, DiPasquale decided to choose the Nittany Lions.

"I really liked the team, and how the team is so close," DiPasquale said. "The campus is gorgeous and it has really strong academics."

DiPasquale's early presence in Happy Valley proved strong performances on the vault, floor exercise, and especially the uneven bars, which was her strongest event.

"She was doing great, a tremendous amount of difficulty, and a tremendous amount of potential, just when she got hurt, she never came back from her knee surgery the way she was supposed to," Shephard said.

After this season comes to a close, DiPasquale will focus on graduating in the fall with a Food Science degree and maybe moving on to graduate school and becoming a graduate assistant.

DiPasquale could also find herself back in the gym in the years to come if the right opportunity comes along.

"If the opportunity presents itself, I would love to [coach]," DiPasquale said. "I am not planning on it or anything."

Either way, she has made her mark in competing for the Nittany Lions and now sharing her knowledge to help better her teammates and the women's gymnastics team.