Former Team USA gymnast Kerri Strug’s name is back in the headlines — but her life has taken a major pivot away from the spotlight since helping bring the Americans to gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Deadline reported on Wednesday, September 24, that Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown will play Strug, now 47, in an upcoming biopic called Perfect. The movie will tell the iconic story of Strug landing a vault on a badly injured ankle at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. As part of a group affectionately called “The Magnificent Seven,” Strug and her teammates won the first-ever gold medal for the United States in the women’s team competition.
Nearly three decades later, Strug finds herself an awfully long way from the gymnastics mat.
The former Olympian now works as a program manager at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
“I help nonprofit organizations — tribal and government programs that receive federal funding — with developing programs for high-risk youth,” Strug explained in a September 2024 interview with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. “So, I feel like I’m still serving Team USA in some capacity.”
She added, “I want to tell young girls out there that it’s really important to believe in yourself and your dreams, not your fears. A lot of times we have real obstacles and we also sometimes allow ourselves to imagine things. But you gotta stay focused on what you want and it’s not always going to be good.”
Strug encouraged young women to use “those setbacks as motivators.”
The Olympian started college at UCLA just weeks after winning gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics and later graduated from Stanford University in 2002 with a master’s degree in social psychology.
While she eventually landed on her feet — something she’s quite used to — Strug admitted adjusting to things post-Olympics was difficult.
“My entire life, all I wanted to do was go to the Olympics and win a gold medal,” she told Sports Illustrated in June 2008. “Then I started college [at UCLA] a few weeks later, and that was a transition. I was used to somebody controlling every move, telling me where to be and what to do and how to do it. The first couple months were sort of tough.”
After briefly working as a teacher in San Francisco, Strug accepted a job as a special assistant in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Department of Treasury.
Strug began working her current job at the Department of Justice in March 2005.
“If you told me I’d be working as a program manager in the OJJDP back when I was in Atlanta, I would’ve laughed,” Strug told Sports Illustrated. “But at the same time, I think I also knew I wasn’t going to be a gym coach or owner. It was important for me to prove to myself and to others that I can be successful in other arenas as well.”
Strug married her husband, Robert Fischer, in April 2010 and the couple share two children: son Tyler, 13, and daughter Alayna, 11.
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