Two-time Olympian Jade Carey joins Oregon State gymnastics coaching staff

Published 2:38 pm Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Former Oregon State gymnast Jade Carey is returning to Corvallis, trading in her leotard for a clipboard and whistle.

The two-time Olympian will join the Oregon State gymnastics coaching staff for the upcoming season as a student assistant coach,  gymnastics head coach Tanya Chaplin announced in a press release Tuesday.

“(Carey’s) experience and passion for excellence are such an asset to our program and I’m excited to have her join our staff,” Chaplin said in a press release. “Her contributions over the past four years have been instrumental in our growth and I know she will continue to make a meaningful difference in the lives of our student-athletes.”

Carey’s highly-decorated collegiate career came to an end at the 2025 season, finishing fourth in the all-around competiton at the NCAA championships. She finished her Oregon State career with 168 event titles and 16 perfect 10s, both of which set program records. Carey’s personal-best all-around score of 39.925 also was an Oregon State record, as well as the fourth-highest score in NCAA history. Alongside her records and 25-total all-American honors, the Pac-12 Conference named Carey its Gymnast of the Year twice (2023 and 2024), winning six conference titles in three seasons.

“This program has meant so much to me throughout my career and I am grateful to remain in a place that feels like home,” Carey said. “I’m excited to help the team and coaches however I can and look forward to seeing what this group can accomplish in the future.”

Similarly to her collegiate success, Carey has been dominate on the international level. She competed with Team USA at both the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2024 Paris games, winning a pair of gold medals and one bronze.

ADRIAN, Mich. – Adrian College is proud to announce the hiring of Rodney Stewart as the new head coach of its ACHA Division 3 Men’s Hockey program. A 2011 graduate of Arizona State University, Stewart competed on the university’s ACHA hockey team during his collegiate career.

Most recently, Stewart served as head coach of the Arizona Mission for the 2023–24 season. Prior to transferring to Arizona State, he played for Eastern Michigan University, where he made 21 appearances during the 2008–09 season, recording two goals and six assists. He was also recognized as an ACHA Academic All-American in the 2009–10 season.

Joining Stewart on the coaching staff will be Brett Siewertsen and Jaren Fernsler, who will continue in their roles as assistant coaches. Additionally, Will Smith will return as the team’s video coach.

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≡ LIFETIME COLLEGE ATHLETES? ≡

The settlement in the House vs. NCAA case, with its billions of dollars in payouts to collegiate athletes, primarily in football and men’s basketball, is only the beginning of the remaking of college sports into something completely new.

Beyond universities playing their (mostly football and basketball) players, the framework that players can compete for four years in sports across five total years, is under fire and is being torn down in multiple – but not all – jurisdictions:

● Last December, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia won an injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, allowing him an extra year of eligibility by invalidating the NCAA rule that athletic participation at a junior college counts against the “five-year rule.” The NCAA has appealed, but also had to relax its rules for now.

● In April of this year, Rutgers safety Jeff Elad received a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, also against enforcement of the five-year rule, as he played at a junior college and wants to play a fifth year of college football across seven seasons (including the Covid seasonal waiver).

Two basketball players have also sued the NCAA on its five-year rule regarding junior college participation, and other football players have received injunctions or State temporary restraining orders related to the junior-college rule.

● In July, Nevada wide receiver Cortez Braham Jr. won a preliminary injunction against the junior-college rule, but also challenged the five-year rule itself. Kansas City-based sports attorney Mit Winter – a former William & Mary basketball player – observed on his LinkedIn page:

“In the order granting the injunction, the court found the following:

“– the five year and JUCO rules are commercial, because they limit the number of years an athlete can play college athletics and therefore limit the ability to be paid as a college athlete

“– the rules have substantial anticompetitive effect and no procompetitive justifications

“– that Braham will be irreparably harmed by not being allowed to play college athletics

“As with the other recents decisions granting preliminary injunctions in similar cases, I’m sure the NCAA will appeal this one. Which means we’ll have four appellate courts addressing these issues. This is a perfect situation for the Supreme Court to step in and settle the issues.”

● Also in July, the NCAA won a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where the holding reversed a preliminary injunction in favor of Wisconsin cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean to play a fifth season in five years.

Fourqurean filed another suit this week, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, asking for another preliminary injunction to allow him to play; the hearing is slated for 27 August.

● The NCAA won another round in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Monday (18th), where players from UCLA, USC and San Diego State were all denied preliminary injunctions against the five-year rule, adding to the confusion.

With different courts finding different results, the case of tailor-made for the U.S. Supreme Court, which has shown high interest in economic freedom and relaxing constraint wherever possible.

That means the five-year-rule could be eliminated by June of 2027 at the latest, opening the door to essentially “lifetime” college players who can be on teams as long as they remain in school, earning bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and Ph.Ds and new formats not yet conjured up by athletic departments.

This is insanity.

The mission statement of the national leader in athletic revenue in 2023 – The Ohio State University – states:

“The university is dedicated to:

“● Creating and discovering knowledge to improve the well-being of our local, state, regional, national and global communities;

“● Educating students through a comprehensive array of distinguished academic programs;

“● Preparing a diverse student body to be leaders and engaged citizens;

“● Fostering a culture of engagement and service.

“We understand that diversity and inclusion are essential components of our excellence.”

Ten-year careers as middle linebackers are not identified as a core offering.

Everyone involved, whether players, parents, school officials, broadcasters and all the rest know this we are now in the era of professional U-23 sports, primarily football and basketball. To properly support the young men and women involved, the “college sports” fiction needs to be dropped.

Instead, college football and college basketball need to be become fully professionalized, with franchises separated from the schools and run either as a single-entity organization, or as independently-owned teams. They would remain on campus, with the “team” or “league” renting the stadium, practice field, dorms or other housing, and the associated sports-related intellectual property from the university and operating on the campus as other businesses do.

In turn, the rights and responsibilities of the players would be collectively bargained with the “league” of whatever style it takes, and they would not be students. If they wish to attend, fine; this can also be part of the deal with the university and the collective-bargaining agreement. But let’s drop the fiction of the student-athlete football or basketball player.

What does this have to do with the Olympic-sports world?

Let’s start by saying that if a privately-organized league of “college” teams in baseball, softball, gymnastics, tennis or other sports can make enough money to establish a separate, professional project, they should be able to, and pay the schools involved a fee for use of the facilities made available, intellectual property, and staff time – such as athletic trainers – if used for their athletes.

The Sports Examiner has proposed this before, in a 29 April 2024 column, with research help from Texas-based NALathletics coach George Perry. Using the Equity in Athletics database of athletic department financial and participation data, Perry noted that 68 top schools in the leading collegiate conferences reported $8.57 billion in total spending and $4.76 billion in spending outside of football and basketball.

The “non-revenue” sports at these schools actually brought in about $1.10 billion (!) and a close guess on “non-revenue” sports costs is $2.14 billion, meaning a “fee” from the football and basketball “college leagues” of $1.04 billion a year would cover the costs of maintaining the “other” college programs such as gymnastics, swimming, track and field and so on. If those sports – on a national basis – can become self-sufficient in their own league, they can leave too.

Just looking at the college football television contracts alone, the big-four leagues earned $2.72 billion for the 2024 season, will earn $2.88 billion for 2025 and $3.71 billion for 2026. (Please refer to the April 2024 column for many more calculations.)

There’s plenty of money to cover this kind of arrangement. The players will win, as they will be professionals; the schools will win as they can turn their “pro teams” over to true professionals and fans will still stream in to their regular tail-gate spots on fall Saturdays. The “non-revenue” sports will be supported by the “pro” teams on campus and can offer scholarship contracts to students who can actually fulfill the role of “student-athletes.”

Are there a lot more details to this? Yes, of course. But it is possible to leave the fiction of a “student-athlete” playing college football behind.

This will not happen because of lawyers or players or athletic directors or broadcasters. Only university presidents – who are the NCAA, by the way – have the power to shape this new format and leave the hypocrisy of the imploding current system behind.

Rich Perelman
Editor

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Years after facing several sexual assault allegations from a number of young athletes, a former gymnastics coach was arrested in Iowa last week after investigators uncovered a trove of child pornography — some of which he created — at his home, according to reports.

Sean Gardner was arrested this week, according to the Des Moines Register, The Guardian and The Associated Press, which was first to report that the disgraced gymnastics coach appeared in court on Friday, Aug. 15.

Gardner, 38, faces a charge for producing child pornography materials after federal authorities raided his home and discovered hundreds of child pornography images, as well as batches of nude images showing girls as young as six years old, which appeared to be taken by Gardner using a hidden camera in a gymnasium bathroom where he worked as a coach, according to the AP.

SafeSport, the organization launched to oversee sexual assault prevention in U.S. Gymnastics in the wake of the Larry Nassar case, suspended Gardner from coaching gymnastics in 2022, three months after an athlete alleged he sexually assaulted her while he was her coach.

A SafeSport database reviewed by PEOPLE shows Gardner was suspended in July 2022 for “allegations of misconduct.”

The AP reported that Gardner was working as a gymnastics coach at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, when he was accused of sexual assault by the former student, who alleged the coach used “inappropriate spotting techniques” in order to put his hands between her legs and touch her privates.

The young girl reportedly also provided the names of at least six other girls she said were abused by Gardner throughout his tenure as a coach at the Iowa gym, where the likes of Olympic gold medalists Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas once trained.

In the years after, two more former students made formal accusations against Gardner for sexual abuse, according to the AP. One alleged that the former coach required her to do stretches that exposed her genitals, fondled and inappropriately touched her during exercises, and also openly discussed his sex life with her. 

The outlet reported that Gardner’s abuse allegedly appeared to date back to his former job as a gymnastics coach at Jump’In Gymnastics in Purvis, Miss., before he moved to Iowa to join Chow’s gym, where he climbed the ranks and later became in charge of the school’s junior Olympics team. He was also named director of an annual event drawing more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. 

The FBI documents obtained by the AP, and requested Tuesday, Aug. 19, by PEOPLE, reportedly say the Jump’In Gymnastics gym’s owner identified the bathroom seen in Gardner’s hidden camera videos as the bathroom at the gym, which has since closed down.

PEOPLE also asked the FBI for comment Tuesday on Gardner’s arrest and charges but did not immediately receive a response. PEOPLE attempted to contact Gardner regarding his charges and allegations Tuesday.

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The AP reported that after Gardner was suspended from coaching gymnastics in 2022, he was able to land a job as a surgical technologist at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa. The hospital told the outlet that Gardner, who was arrested and charged last week, is no longer an employee there.

The child pornography production charge Gardner faces carries a potential 30-year prison sentence, according to the AP.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

Buckeyes captain launches special Ohio State Beats by Dre headphones in ‘Beats Elite’ campaign originally appeared on A to Z Sports.

Ohio State Buckeyes fans will have the chance to get some of the coolest school-branded headphones on the market as the 2025 college football season arrives. On Tuesday, Beats by Dre announced that nine athletes have partnered with the brand to represent their Beats Elite class. At the forefront of the marketing is Buckeyes safety Caleb Downs.

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It includes some of the best players in the sport ahead of their upcoming seasons with Alabama WR Ryan Williams, Michigan QB Bryce Underwood, Georgia RB Nate Frazier, Texas LB Colin Simmons, Oregon QB Dante Moore, Florida QB DJ Lagway, Oklahoma QB John Mateer, and South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers.

View the original article to see embedded media.

For the third consecutive year, Beats by Dre has rolled out its name, image, and likeness (NIL) campaign, showcasing some of college football’s brightest stars. Each year’s group has featured standout athletes who dominate on the field, including Downs, now a two-time member of the prestigious ‘Beats Elite’ after earning the honor in 2024.

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This year’s class includes seven of the most marketable figures in college sports, extending beyond just football. The lineup boasts impressive NIL valuations: Sellers ($3.7M), Lagway ($3.7M), Underwood ($3M), Mateer ($2.7M), Williams ($2.7M), Downs ($2.4M), and Simmons ($1.5M), all ranking among the Top-50 overall and Top-30 in college football. Frazier ($827K) and Moore ($640K) also command significant valuations, cementing their influence.

These athletes are not only marketable but also among the top talents projected for the upcoming season, representing some of the sport’s elite programs. Sellers, Lagway, Moore, Mateer, Williams, and Underwood rank in the top 12 for Heisman Trophy odds, according to BetMGM.

They’ve also earned widespread preseason accolades, with Williams, Downs, and Simmons named AP Preseason All-Americans, while Sellers and Frazier joined them as preseason all-conference picks in the SEC and Big Ten. Additionally, their nine programs are all among the top 12 in BetMGM’s odds to claim the College Football Playoff national title.

This story was originally reported by A to Z Sports on Aug 19, 2025, where it first appeared.

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