At 19, Laurie Hernandez is set to become the youngest inductee to the New Jersey Hall of Fame, joining luminaries such as Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Frank Sinatra and Phillip Roth.

But Hernandez, who hails from Old Bridge Township, is no stranger to “youngest."

When she was 16, she became the youngest member of the United States women’s gymnastics team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she won a gold medal in the team event and a silver on balance beam.

The same year, Hernandez, known for her stylish, emotive performances, became the youngest celebrity to win “Dancing with the Stars.”

“It’s mind-blowing, honestly," she tells NJ Advance Media. "I mean, it leaves me speechless. These were all things that I never would’ve thought possible when I was a kid, and now I have this opportunity and I’m so grateful.”

On Sunday, Hernandez will join inductees who are up to 50 years her senior — “Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin, Martha Stewart, former New York Giants Harry Carson and Bart Oates, “Seinfeld” actor Jason Alexander, The Smithereens, Southside Johnny and more — as they’re welcomed to the 2018 class of the New Jersey Hall of Fame at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park.

A few days before her trip back home, she spoke to NJ Advance Media about the honor.

Once again, she’s got this

Hernandez has spent the last year living and training in Orange County, California. The New Brunswick native took two years off from gymnastics after the 2016 Olympics. Now, she has her eye on Tokyo in 2020.

“Eventually I just realized how much I missed it and I chose to come back," she says.

Hernandez previously trained at Monmouth Gymnastics Academy in Morganville. When she decided to plunge back into competition, she opted for a new approach and fresh scenery.

“I already had gone to the Olympics doing it one way," Hernandez says.

Now, as ever — like she famously told herself before taking the balance beam in Rio — she’s “got this.”

After training camp in November, Hernandez expects to make her official return to competition in early 2020. She’s currently training five hours per day, six day per week, as well as working with a trainer and physical therapist.

Flying into 2020

Hernandez started on the road to a gymnastics career when she was 5. Ballet classes bored her. But “flying” — that was something else.

"It was just consistently training, you know pretty much 11 years straight,” says Hernandez, who was homeschooled. Just before the Olympics, she chose to turn pro instead of accepting a scholarship to the University of Florida.

During her two-year break after Rio, Hernandez traveled, competed on “Dancing with the Stars" and wrote a memoir and a children’s book — respectively titled “I Got This” and “She’s Got This." She returned to training last year with a lot of conditioning and cardio, later adding gymnastics basics before moving on to advanced skills.

Laurie Hernandez competes in balance beam during the 2016 Olympics in Rio.Lars Baron | Getty Images

“The next step would be piecing that all together into a routine to start competing for next year," she says.

“Naturally, I still want to make that 2020 team,” she says. “Somehow I found a love even more for gymnastics now than I did before. I have the comfort of knowing, ‘hey, you’ve made (it) before.'"

It was a “small village” in New Jersey that got Hernandez to where she is now, she says — her family, friends, doctors, coaches and physical therapists. In 2014, the gymnast faced a series of setbacks when she fractured her wrist, then had to take a long break and undergo surgery after she dislocated her right kneecap and tore her patella ligament.

Hernandez’s mother is coming out to visit her in California, where the gymnast is staying with the family of a teammate.

“Doing it as a community together again is a big one for me,” she says. "Really just going out there and enjoying the sport for what it is and the fact that I have so much freedom in flying and embracing that and having fun with it while I’m competing.”

Hernandez with her brother, Marcus, sister, Jelysa, and father, Anthony, at a celebration for the Olympic gymnast in Old Bridge in 2016.Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Hernandez says she always appreciated that the support wasn’t just about “you can do it" — cue the pressure to perform — but also that her boosters would be there for her regardless of the outcome.

“They were saying ‘hey, no, we support you, whatever happens.’ That was really helpful. Even some of my favorite diners would put posters on their windows saying to check me out while I was competing. It was never asked for, but they did it. It was the sweetest thing to come home to."

When Hernandez did bring home the gold and the silver as one of the Final Five, Old Bridge threw her a big homecoming party. At a parade, thousands cheered the hometown hero, daughter of Wanda Hernandez, a Perth Amboy school social worker who served in the Army Reserve, and Anthony Hernandez, a court clerk in New York.

“It was crazy,” she recalls. “It was a community of people just so excited to embrace an athlete that was one of their own.”

After the Olympics, both Hernandez and her nickname, the Human Emoji, were household names. Ben Stansall | AFP | Getty Images

The Human Emoji on diners and ‘Game of Thrones'

But what does Hernandez make of that nickname of hers — the Human Emoji? Along with her “I got this" balance beam moment in 2016, the gymnast’s expressive face helped cement her status as a meme-able competitor.

“I think it’s pretty easy to have fun with it," she says. “But it also makes sense, I mean I get it. Competing in floor routines in gymnastics, everybody’s pretty stoic."

When she’s not training, Hernandez can be found strumming her guitar and singing. She often shares performances of cover songs with her followers on social media.

“I always had a love for music growing up,” she says.

Living out in California has its perks, to be sure, but Hernandez does miss the taste of home.

“You can’t replicate the diners anywhere,” she says. “Diners, bagels, breakfast foods.”

“It’s like walking into a family’s house and them making you breakfast," Hernandez says, recalling meals in local restaurants with her family. "The plates were just so big and the food was so delicious. It was a place for me and my siblings (she has a brother, Marcus, and a sister, Jelysa) to go as well, for us to connect. Whether that was 8 o’clock in the morning or 10 o’clock at night, that was our place. So I think that’s definitely what I miss the most.”

Hernandez is excited for the New Jersey Hall of Fame ceremony on Sunday, but not just because of the honor. One of her personal heroes will be in the crowd: George R.R. Martin.

“I’m a big ‘Game of Thrones’ fan," she says. “Because of his work and his ideas, it created a whole community for me outside of gymnastics that I got to spend time with,” she says of Martin, who grew up in Bayonne. “So he’s someone that I really admire and I would love to meet with him.”

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.