2026 NCAA gymnastics coaching carousel: Who’s in, who’s out

As athletes start to move into their new collegiate homes, the tumultuous 2026 NCAA gymnastics coaching carousel has officially started to wind down

Over the past four months, numerous programs have retooled, revamped, or fully reinvented their coaching staffs ahead of the 2027 season. As preseason starts to pick up across the country, we are getting ever closer to seeing whether these new hires pay dividends or if these programs will be back to the drawing board next year. 

With six new head coaches (plus a seventh pending at Air Force) and over three dozen new assistants, this year’s offseason was one of the most frenetic in recent memory. It can be easy to lose track of all of the coaching chaos, especially with elite season now in full swing, so treat this as your one-stop shop for the major coaching carousel news you missed this offseason.

Roberts leaves Georgia for Auburn

Perhaps the most shocking change of the offseason came when Ryan Roberts was announced as Auburn’s new head coach, replacing longtime Tigers ringleader Jeff Graba. 

Roberts, formerly an assistant coach for Auburn’s archrival Alabama, spent the last four seasons with the Georgia GymDogs – first as an assistant before being named co-head coach alongside Cecile Canqueteau-Landi in April 2024. 

Roberts’ tenure with the GymDogs coincided with the team’s rise back into national relevance as it transitioned out of the rocky Courtney Kupets Carter era. As the sole holdover from Kupets Carter’s staff after she was fired, Roberts was instrumental in guiding the team while Landi served as head coach for the gold-medal-winning U.S. squad at the Paris Olympics. 

With Landi officially joining the team in August 2024, post-Paris, Roberts’ role was reduced slightly, though the success of the team with the pair at the helm is undeniable, even in a short time. The GymDogs finished 2026 with the program’s highest season-end ranking since 2016, finishing as the sixth best team in the country after making it to the national semifinals.

Auburn’s goal with Roberts at the helm will be strikingly similar to that of the Gymdogs – redemption. Auburn celebrated a major milestone only four years ago when it made its first national final, but since then, the Tigers have struggled to stay in the top 25. With top 2026 recruit Elizaveta Grebenkova switching her commitment to Bama after Graba mutually parted ways with Auburn, Roberts will have his work cut out for him to bring the same success to the Plains that he did to Athens. 

In addition to Roberts, Auburn hired Aja Sims-Fletcher as associate head coach, along with Adam Duncan and recently graduated Tigers standout Sophia Davila (née Groth) as assistant coaches. Roberts believes that these hires will fill out Auburn’s staff with the same sense of balance that netted great success at Georgia.

Laurent Landi makes the move to NCAA

Roberts’ departure, along with that of Georgia assistant coaches Marissa King and Oleksii Koltakov, left a gaping hole in the Bulldogs’ coaching staff fresh off the team’s best season in a decade. With Georgia’s history of championship domination and newfound zeal in recent years, athletic director Josh Brooks needed to make a splash that would keep the GymDogs ahead of their rising SEC peers. 

In came Laurent Landi, former World Champions Centre coach and husband of current head coach Canqueteau-Landi.

When Canqueteau-Landi first took the job, gymnastics fans speculated that her husband may not be too far behind, but Laurent chose to stay at the Spring, Texas gym temporarily while his wife moved nearly 900 miles away to Athens. Staying in Texas allowed Laurent to finish his coaching obligations at WCC while the couple’s daughter, 2024 Paris Olympic diver Juliette Landi, finished high school.

Juliette is now a sophomore at Auburn, and after some time spent consulting and traveling, the logical next step was for the Landis to reunite, professionally, at Georgia.

Employing the pair that coached Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, and Madison Kocian to Olympic gold has instantly made Georgia a potential hub for elites looking to continue high-level competition through college. The duo netted their first major get in the transfer portal with this exact situation in mind, as Arkansas star Joscelyn Roberson chose to reunite with her former club coaches.

Along with the Landi reunion, Georgia also hired Megan Haught and Brenna Brooks as assistant coaches to replace King and Koltakov. Both have known the Landis for a long time, dating back to the pair’s days coaching at WOGA.

Wieber steps down as Brooks takes reins at Auburn

The most unique development of the offseason came when Jordyn Wieber announced she was stepping down as the head coach at Arkansas in order to focus on her family and other passions.

Her husband, fellow Olympian Chris Brooks, was simultaneously announced as the new head coach of the Gymbacks.

READ MORE: Why Jordyn Wieber choosing family over coaching deserves respect, not criticism

In the wake of the transition, with Wieber stepping into a fan role as she explores life outside of gymnastics, Brooks promoted both Kyla Ross and Catelyn Branson to associate head coach roles. To complete his staff, Brooks hired former Texas Woman’s assistant coach Zan Jones.

And while Arkansas lost Roberson and a few others to the transfer portal, they gained a few from the portal as well, including former Minnesota and current Irish star Emma Slevin.

New programs make a splash

Along with the numerous coaching changes at established programs, two new teams – both located in Texas – introduced their inaugural coaching staffs. 

Texas State was the first to announce its head coach, picking Penn State’s Sarah Brown. Brown has quietly guided the Nittany Lions through one of the most productive periods in recent team history, while being an underrated recruiter who brought heralded prospects like Ava Piedrahita and Elizabeth Leary to Happy Valley.

Though Texas State had previously indicated that it was looking for a head coach with ties to Texas, the Missouri-native Brown evidently brought enough to the table in the eyes of athletic director Kelly Damphousse to overlook that stipulation. 

At the moment, Texas State has only announced one assistant coach – former Denver standout Lynnzee Brown, who is following Sarah Brown from Penn State. The two coaches have known each other for quite some time, dating back to their days training at GAGE. Sarah Brown was a senior elite when Lynnzee was just rising through the developmental ranks, and Sarah later coached Lynnzee to the Paris Olympics for Haiti while they were on staff at Penn State together. The longstanding bond, along with the juxtaposition of experience and fresh perspective, may be just what the Bobcats need to hit the ground running in 2028. 

A few weeks after Texas State made its announcement, the second new Texan program – McMurry University – announced Aleah Cassmeyer as its inaugural women’s head coach. JT Fletcher was announced as McMurry’s men’s head coach last week.

Cassmeyer spent the last year at LIU after a two-year stint at Wisconsin-Oshkosh. In both stops, she primarily coached vault and bars. The McMurry job will be somewhat of a homecoming for the Fort Worth native as she assumes her first collegiate head coach position. Though Cassmeyer’s NCAA resume is by no means the longest, her club coaching experience at Texas-based U.S. Gold Gymnastics and Cheer Academy may give her an edge when it comes to recruiting in the Lone Star State. 

JT Fletcher was announced as McMurry’s men’s head coach last week.

Familiar faces fill Big Ten

The Michigan State Spartans have been on a roll post-COVID, ending the season ranked in the top 15 in each of the last five years after two-plus decades without surpassing 17th place. Though head coach Mike Rowe deserves his flowers for Michigan State’s growth after a truncated 2021 season saw the Spartans finish 56th nationally, perhaps no one has been as vital to the Spartans’ success as associate head coach Nicole Jones.

A former standout competitor for Michigan State, Jones brought a gymnast’s viewpoint to the coaching staff of Rowe, who was a professional dancer before pivoting to coaching in the mid-2000s. She leveraged her experience to great success, netting four regional assistant coach of the year nods over the last five seasons.

Unfortunately for Michigan State, the consequence of newfound success was that its assistant coaches were ripe for the picking for programs on the hunt for top talent. Though Jones likely had many potential programs courting her, it was Nebraska that finally got her to make the move after 16 seasons with the Spartans.

Now in charge of her own team for the first time, Jones will be tasked with revitalizing the historically successful Cornhuskers team that has struggled to find its footing since longtime head coach Dan Kendig retired in 2018. 

On the other side of Big Ten country, Brown’s move to Texas State tasked the Penn State athletic department with finding a new coach who would not sacrifice the growth experienced during her tenure, including top 20 finishes in two of the last three seasons. The search was further complicated by the truncated timeframe caused by Brown’s late June hiring at Texas State, which left Penn State only a couple months to plan for the season before its gymnasts arrived on campus. 

Penn State ended up calling upon the reigning Mountain West Coach of the Year – Air Force’s Jennifer Green. Green, a former assistant at Missouri and Iowa and competitor at LSU back in the ’80s, brings decades of experience to University Park.

At Air Force, Green handled training alongside the intricacies that make coaching at a service academy particularly unique. Now armed with modern fixtures of the sport like the transfer portal, she will have the opportunity to bring Air Force’s trademark originality – the Falcons fielded a beam lineup with six different acro series in 2025 – to an even bigger stage. 

Former college stars find new homes

Though many of the most prominent moves of the offseason involved long-time coaches with years of experience, a few recently graduated NCAA stars found new homes as well.

Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Grace McCallum is returning to her home state to join the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who are fresh off the most successful season in program history. The Twin Cities metro native spent the last year at her alma mater, Utah, as a student assistant coach. 

Jordan Gamboa, better known to gymnastics fans as Jordan Bowers, graduated from Oklahoma in 2025 as one of the most decorated college gymnasts of the last decade. Similar to her former national team teammate, McCallum, Gamboa returned to her alma mater post-graduation, working as a student coach for the Sooners during their 2026 championship season. 

With immense success already under her belt, Gamboa is joining a new-look Nebraska squad led by the recently hired Jones. The Huskers are looking to live up to their historical success after years of disappointment under Heather Brink. The new coaching staff, alongside a barrage of high-profile transfers, including 2024 Romanian Olympian Lilia Cosman, may be just what it takes to get over the hump.

As one former national champion leaves the Sooners, another – Olivia Trautman – is rejoining the ranks. Fresh off a year at Utah State under Kristin White, Trautman will bring a combination of experience and familiarity with head coach K.J. Kindler and her championship-winning ways. Trautman’s hire is particularly consequential, as she is replacing 2024 WCGA National Assistant Coach of the Year Ashley Kerr, whose beam squad has finished the season ranked top three in the nation every year since she came to Norman in 2019. 

Though Shannon Evans may not have the name recognition of McCallum or Trautman, the former BYU standout cultivated somewhat of a cult following in gymnastics circles for her quirky floor routines, themed around pop culture staples like Super Mario and Hawaii Five-0 during her time with the Cougars. 

After a stint in the healthcare world as both a labor and delivery and hospice nurse, Evans returned to the gymnastics world as a women’s developmental coach at Magic City Gymnastics in Montana. A little over a year later, new BYU head coach Natalie Broekman has announced that Evans will be rejoining the Cougars — now as an assistant coach. Her choreographic expertise, which she has continued honing since graduation, will be a sure fit for a BYU lineup that has gained notoriety for its unique, out-of-the-box choreography and concepts.