Fifteen years after her gymnastics career ended, Nicole Mullins still has a balance beam in her living room.

The beam isn’t there so much for the Dirigo High School alum to do back handsprings, scissors leaps and arabesques whenever the mood strikes as it is a reminder of when self-discovery was just a salto away.

“I’ve done a lot of sports…” said Mullins, who now focuses most of her still well-stoked competitive fire on triathlons and adventure sports, “but gymnastics is just a really exhilarating sport.”

Mullins’ passion for gymnastics helped her walk on to the University of New Hampshire and become one of the school’s greatest gymnasts while helping to lead the program to its greatest heights in the early 1990s. This past June, UNH inducted her into its Sports Hall of Fame.

Her achievements in gymnastics are even more remarkable considering she got her start in gymnastics much later than most of her peers. A rambunctious youth, Mullins discovered the sport at age 8, several years later than most top gymnasts. She fell in love with it immediately, but limited coaching and equipment kept her at a recreational level well into her teens.

It wasn’t until she joined the Andy Valley Olympic School of Gymnastics in Auburn at age 16 that she truly got a taste of competitive gymnastics. She was eventually invited to join the club team and her love of the sport reached new heights.

Mullins, who ran cross country and played tennis at Dirigo, tried to help start a gymnastics program at her school. Although it folded after one year, she wasn’t discouraged.

Intrigued by how much she still had to learn about the sport and how much of her potential remained untapped, Mullins wanted to continue her gymnastics career into college.

Although she would have to be a walk-on, she chose UNH over Ivy League schools Cornell, Brown and Penn because of its superior gymnastics program.

Mullins competed in the all-around right away and did well. An injury late in the season briefly sidetracked her, but she had done enough to impress UNH gymnastics head coach Gail Goodspeed.

“I think she was the original sports psychologist,” said Goodspeed, who is in her 34th year leading the Wildcats. “She set goals for herself, kept percentages. She’d come into the gym and, say she was working on a flight move on balance beam, she didn’t just do it. She’d set a goal ‘Today, I’m going to hit 80 percent.’ She’d do that on her own, without anyone directing her to do that.”

“I earned a full scholarship at the end of the year and I don’t know if I’ve had a happier day in my life,” Mullins said.

The day she qualified for NCAA Championship as a sophomore ranks right up there. Competing at arch rival Penn State, she won bars, the last event, to become just the third student-athlete in UNH history to qualify for the NCAA meet.

Mullins went to nationals in Minneapolis, and admits now that something was still missing. She was one of only two Wildcats to qualify.

“It was really hard. It was a fantastic experience (but) it’s really hard to go as an individual without the support of your team,” she said.

Two years later, the Wildcats did reach nationals as a team, winning UNH’s only regional championship at the University of Rhode Island.

“For us, it was like a dream come true,” Mullins said.

Led by co-captain Mullins, the underdog Wildcats won the ECAC title and set a school record with their No. 12 national ranking. The national meet in Salt Lake City, Utah was a bit of a disappointment because injuries kept the Wildcats from reaching their full potential, but “it was an amazing experience,” Mullins said.

Mullins continued her amazing run of individual success that senior season. A year after winning the ECAC all-around and uneven bars titles and being named team MVP, she earned ECAC Gymnast of the Year honors while defending her all-around and uneven bars championships and adding the balance beam title.

“She always adapted and continued to learn new skills,” Goodspeed said. “Nicole has such a competitive attitude. Even in a golf game, she’s very mellow, but she wants to win, and she won’t settle for less than her best.”

Mullins wasn’t ready to settle down after her college career ended. A four-time Scholastic All-American, Mullins graduated from UNH in 1994 with a degree in exercise science, but her competitive gymnastics career continued.

“I was still learning because of my late start,” she said. “I ended up competing until I was 26 or 27 (for club teams), and I was actually better than I was when I was in college.”

“The most important thing to me was I achieved a higher skill level,” she added. “I always wanted to keep learning. To me, it wasn’t about winning. It was about learning.”

At ages 25 and 26, she took part in Junior Olympic Nationals, just a step below the elite Olympic level, finishing as high as 16th in the all-around.

While competing, Mullins obtained her master’s and Ph.D at Kent State. Currently, she teaches exercise science at Youngstown State University in Ohio.

Mullins has kept in touch with Goodspeed and all of her coaches from UNH, but admitted she was initially reluctant to return to Durham, N.H. in June for the induction ceremony.

“At first, honestly, I felt a little silly for getting an award for something that paid for my education, helped me see the country, gave my parents a financial break (with the scholarship),” she said. “I was incredibly honored. And the induction ceremony — thank God I went. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”