Fun fact: Many -- actually, most -- of the country's top NCAA coaches were once college gymnasts themselves.
Funner fact: Some of their routines (and even fluff pieces) are available on Youtube. Here are seven that I found, and some backstory:
-- Megan (McCunniff) Marsden, Utah, 1983. Now coaching at: Utah. Marsden (nee McCunniff), was a star Ute from Cedar Falls, Iowa the year she won the NCAA all-around title, beating future NBC commentator Elfi Schlegel, a Canadian Olympian competing for Florida. Marsden's dance and toepoint were exceptional in their cleanliness. (Editor's note: The leo she won the NCAA title in was exceptional also, but for different reasons.)
Bonus in this coverage is early commentary by Kathy Johnson (later Kathy Johnson-Clarke), and a fluff piece about her courtship with coach Greg Marsden, to whom she was already engaged during her senior season at Utah.
Johnson was still an elite level gymnast at the time and would go on to earn Olympic silver and bronze medals a year later in Los Angeles. Marsden went on to play a gymnast in the 1985 movie "American Anthem" and become the second half of one of the country's most powerful coaching couples. Watch it here.
-- Tanya (Service) Chaplin, UCLA, 1989. Now coaching at: Oregon State. A captivating dancer who used the same floor music that Vanessa Atler would make famous a decade later, Service's 1989 routine was all about drama. Didn't hurt that she knew right where the floor was on her tumbling passes too. Service, a U.S. team member at the 1983 Worlds, was also USA Gymnastics's Athlete Representative from 1990 to 1999 while she worked as an assistant coach at the University of Washington. Watch her on floor here.
-- Dana (Dobransky) Duckworth, Alabama, 1990-1993. Now coaching at: Alabama. The woman behind the Crimson Tide's floor choreography had very nice lines on floor herself. What this routine from the 1987 Olympic festival shows is her potential as an NCAA gymnast, potential that was fulfilled when she competed for Alabama between 1990 and 1993. Duckworth won two NCAA beam titles during her collegiate career Watch her here.
-- Rhonda Faehn, UCLA, 1992. Now coaching at: Florida. The commentator takes a pot shot at Bela Karolyi's choreographer when she says that "it's interesting to see Rhonda with choreography like this...I've never seen Rhonda actually dance." Faehn, sporting a curly brown bob in this video, hardly resembles the cool blonde who leads one of the top NCAA teams in the nation. See it here.
-- Kristen Smyth, Cal, 1992. Now coaching at: Stanford. Unlike Faehn, Smith, who competed against her for Cal in the early 1990s, does look a lot like her present self. Also evident in her "Phantom of the Opera" routine is the expresion that allowed her to work as a professional dancer in the Bay Area after her graduation. My only complaint is that I wish Valorie Kondos Field had done Smyth's choreography. Watch it here, beginning at 2:30.
-- Kristen Maloney, UCLA, 2005. Now coaching at: New Hampshire. The new assistant coach had the most high-profile elite career of anyone on this list. Though she was often critized for less-than-perfect form, her difficulty on beam and floor were second to none throughout the 1997-2000 quad. My favorite floor routine from Maloney has always been her 1999 floor routine to music from "West Side Story," because it did what good choreography does: plays up the gymnast's strengths, and hides some of the weaknesses. Watch it here.
-- Tabitha Yim, Stanford, 2009. Now coaching at: Stanford. Yim joined the Cardinal as an assistant in 2010, and perhaps not too surprisingly, Stanford has shown massive improvement this year. Yim herself was a gymnast who genuinely adored the sport and had a real sense of humor about her gymnastics. My favorite memory of her long elite career was her gleeful reaction to nailing her floor routine (and second place in the all-around) at the 2002 U.S. Championships. Watch it here.
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