The Gym Devils continue to build on last season by adding three new assistant coaches: James Williams, Lacy Dagen, and Jazmyn Foberg, all of whom hail from different coaching experiences.
Coming off a year with a smaller staff, the coaches provide more eyes across all the events and add their unique touch to the team, according to senior all-around gymnast Emily White.
White said the environment in the gym has been positive with their unique touches and supportive personalities, which is an essential component for this season.
"That's also important going into this year, knowing that we can trust our coaches and having a good connection with them," White said. "That's going to be super important because they're obviously an essential part of this team."
Williams was hired in June 2023 after he spent time coaching at both San José State and Yale's club gymnastics team. He won awards while coaching at both programs, earning the 2022 MPSF Assistant Coach of the Year with the Spartans and the 2018 ECAC Assistant Coach of the Year at Yale.
Through the years, ASU has always been a school of which Williams has taken note.
"I had always watched ASU," Williams said. "I mean, they had been a program that didn’t get necessarily the top recruits in the country, but always did a good job. I know that has to be because of some little things and putting importance on certain details in the gym."
Williams was the primary bar coach for the Spartans and co-coached the floor events. He's applying that experience to the Gym Devils by primarily focusing on the floor and helping out on the bar.
He's also endured transitions as a coach and has seen different ways the sport is operated. Team preparation from Yale to San José State differed based on the levels of competition, and both schools differ from ASU in terms of financial and marketing resources.
All the transition also leads to a vault of knowledge about gymnastics.
"The differences, be the amount of time that's put into things like recruiting, all the little aspects of when you start doing routines because from club to college, the routine starts to matter a lot," Williams said. "In college, it’s almost from day one."
Dagen knows a little something about this competitive aspect, being a former collegiate gymnast herself. Announced as part of the team in June 2023, Dagen also garnered coaching experience as a volunteer coach for two years, one year at UC Davis and one at Oregon State. She's also an alum from Oregon State, where she competed on the Pac-12 gymnastics team.
Dagen offers multiple perspectives as a former student-athlete, including settling the nerves before competitions and pushing through injuries. According to Dagen, she endured many injuries as an athlete, including five knee surgeries.
She can also resonate with the student-athlete psyche and the challenges the girls may face away from their sport.
"When kids are struggling, I know how to dig into them to try to figure out what's going on with them for real," Dagen said. "They're people first, and usually when things are off, it’s because something in their life is going on, and I went through that as an athlete."
At ASU, Dagen is specifically the beam coach and choreographer for floor events, but the entire coaching staff chimes in for all events. She said the environment in the gym has been super welcoming, and the entire staff is hungry for a successful season.
"It sounds silly, but I've wanted to coach college gymnastics since I went to my first meet when I was like 10 years old," Dagen said. "So this has always been the goal, always been the dream."
Coach Foberg is another former gymnast who is now coaching the Gym Devils. Foberg competed at Florida from 2017 to 2021 and was a three-time U.S. National Team member.
She came on board the team in October 2023, primarily coaching the vault event at ASU while helping out on the floor. While she's taking her experience as a gymnast with her, she's also learned from coaching younger girls in the sport.
She’s been able to remind the college girls of their long-lasting love for the sport and to ensure they carry that same passion as they move up competitively.
"It was awesome coaching the little girls, seeing how much they really enjoy gymnastics at a young age and really wanting them to enjoy it and love it as much all the way until the college level," Foberg said.
The new coaches have gotten off on the right foot with the girls, jumping into a positive and determined environment. Dagen said one goal for the team is to reach a score of at least 196.000 for each meet, something they achieved last week against Denver.
It's these little goals the team is working on with the coaches on the pathway to pursue larger ambitions.
"I think coming here, it's been exactly what I thought," Williams said. "I think doing basics every day (and) still requiring basic skills throughout all the events. That's what builds a great foundation, why the program’s been successful the last couple of years."
Edited by Alfred Smith III, Walker Smith and Caera Learmonth.
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