When Rene Lyst took over the head coaching duties at ASU in May 2014, she called it a "dream job."
But that didn't mean she wasn't aware of the very real challenge ahead of her.
Lyst knew she had big shoes to fill in the desert. Her predecessor, John Spini, had spent 34 seasons as the head coach of the Gym Devils, leading the team to the NCAA Championships 21 times.
Spini's 34 years sporting maroon and gold at the helm of the gymnastics team made him the longest-tenured head coach in any sport in ASU's history.
But Lyst's own résumé is nothing to overlook.
At the time she was hired last season, Lyst was fresh off an extremely successful run as the co-head coach at Arkansas which lasted 13 years, saw 11 team appearances in NCAA Regionals, seven NCAA championship appearances, five top-10 finishes and two NCAA Super-Six appearances.
Those accomplishments made her recognizable on the national level, even to members of her future team at ASU.
"I didn't know (Lyst) personally when I first found out she was coming here, but I knew a lot about her," junior Stephanie Miceli said. "I knew she was at Stanford and Arkansas, and I knew she and the other coach at Arkansas actually started the gymnastics program there, and they brought the team to Nationals. So I knew she was a really good coach, and I knew a lot of good things about her, so I was pretty excited when I heard she was coming here."
One of Lyst's goals at the start of her tenure at ASU was to "build upon Arizona State's legacy of winning tradition."
In her debut season, Lyst helped send two athletes to NCAA Regionals: junior Taylor Allex and senior Natasha Sundby.
That seemed to be a high point in a season where the Gym Devils won only two meets, their first and last of the year.
But those statistics don't tell the whole story as the team battled through an injury bug that bit the team and kept them often hurt and unavailable to compete at full strength in many meets this season.
Lyst acknowledged the injury difficulties from the season but said she and the team wanted more to focus on the positives that came out of the season.
"Obviously, we were disappointed in some of the competitions this year, but overall, I think we've made great strides to where we want to be in the long run," she said.
While Lyst remained optimistic, she was appreciative that her team had her back for the entire season and worked equally as hard to stay positive while taking everything a day at a time.
"We really talked about being the best you could be on that night," Lyst said. "We didn't really look at total outcomes or who we were against or any of that. It was, 'Let's be the best we can absolutely be today with what we have.' I think the girls really bought into that. I was really proud of them, because they showed a lot of desire and a lot of passion, and I think that taught us a big lesson moving forward of how strong we can be."
An example of that came in late January in the team's first Pac-12 dual-meet against Stanford, in what Lyst called the most-memorable moment for her in her first season with ASU.
The Gym Devils were performing with substitutes on the balance beam because their top performers were injured.
The beam is often considered the most challenging gymnastics event because of the skill that goes into it, and asking an athlete to perform it when it is not their primary event is something like asking a football player to sub-in and play basketball.
But the Gym Devils rotated in and out on events they weren't comfortable with all season and on this occasion against Stanford, Lyst reached an epiphany.
"I remember sitting at the beam, and we were hitting it really well and competing really, really hard and at that moment and I remember thinking, 'I've never been more proud of a team than I am of this team right now,'" Lyst said. "We were down people, and it was really stressful, but everyone had a great attitude. Everybody was fighting hard and being the best they could be.
"We all want to win, believe me I want to win as much as anyone, but sometimes you win by just doing that, being the best you can be. At that moment I was so proud of the team and how we handled adversity that I knew we were in the right direction for success in the future."
Lyst's own passion and reassurance reflected well on her athletes, especially Miceli, who had spent two seasons being coached by Spini but needed to adjust to the change Lyst brought.
"I think there was a lot of change, but I think it was good change," Miceli said. "I love Rene as a coach, I think she is awesome. We get along very well together at the gym and I think she is bringing the program in the right direction and she has a good plan for the program."
Part of Lyst's plan for the program was bringing in two new assistant coaches: Ralph Rosso and Jeff Hunt.
Lyst had worked with Rosso at Arkansas and Hunt, she noted last year, is a strong recruiter which the team hopes will help when it comes to bringing in future Gym Devils.
Bringing on a completely new staff in her debut year in the desert made things a little bit different for Lyst, compared to her first years at Arkansas and then at Stanford before that.
"It wasn't completely dissimilar, but at the same time, this was a different situation in the sense that I was taking over after a coach that had been here for such a long time," Lyst said. "There were so many new people in the department, so I think there's a lot of change going on, a lot of growth and a lot of positive things. So with all that change, it made it a different experience than those other places."
So far, so good for Lyst and her team.
"I think we've laid a great foundation for what's expected on our day-to-day living so to speak, meaning our practicing and our schedules," she said. "We've done a lot of work in recruiting and that's really exciting for the future for the classes coming in. We're all very excited about that."
Now that the season has come to a close, Lyst and the team are already looking ahead to next season even though it won't start until next winter.
"Right now we've been doing postseason conditioning with the team, with the returners, and that's going great," Lyst said. "Everyone has a great attitude, is excited about the future and is working extremely hard. ... I've compared (this team) from over the summer to now and seen how much stronger they are, not just physically but mentally as well."
Miceli is also excited for next year, which will be her senior season, because she knows Lyst will build on what she brought to the team this season.
"I enjoyed the passion she brought to practice every single day," Miceli said. "She had a steady plan for us to follow, and she was always passionate."
And that steady plan is already being worked on with next year in mind as Lyst is looking at the areas she knows can be improved.
"I think we'll be a lot better on vault," Lyst said. "We'll have people healed up, and we'll have vaulters coming in. Obviously, that was a big struggle for us this year with injuries, but we are gonna get more people back and get some more depth and that should right away get a lot better. I think we'll get a lot better on everything because we'll have more depth on routines. I think we will have eight to 10 routines on every event next year, which will be a whole lot more routines than we had this year."
Lyst's preparation for he sophomore season is underway and she is more than optimistic about the path ahead.
"It's really exciting thinking about the future and what we have coming."
Reach the reporter at mtquesad@asu.edu or follow @mitchTquesada on Twitter.
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