MSU gymnastics' journey to NCAA Championships 'means everything'

EAST LANSING — Inside Michigan State’s gymnastics program, there is a sense that this is still just the beginning. And yet what the Spartans just accomplished was every bit a final frontier.

Reaching this week’s NCAA Championships for the first time in 37 years had been in the making for a year or three or five or several more, depending on how you look at the Spartans’ journey over the last decade.

It’s also a reminder that the rise of a program isn’t always linear or without frustration. Because, a year ago, after coming up just short of advancing beyond the NCAA regional finals for the third straight year, after tightening up for the first time under the weight of expectations, they had to reexamine their approach.

Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Couch: Michigan State’s gymnastics program rises from the ashes

‘The elephant in the room’

When the Spartans left the regional final a year ago after a disappointing fourth-pace finish in Gainesville, Florida, MSU’s coaches knew an introspection was needed. For the first time in a big meet, they didn’t perform to their level.

“They didn’t realize how close they were until they got in it,” Rowe said. “They tightened up. They tightened up on every event where they were used to just being relaxed and confident.”

They also had a new behemoth to deal with in the Big Ten in UCLA, which features three-time Olympic medalist Jordan Chiles. The Bruins beat MSU narrowly in Los Angeles and then put up a record-breaking score at the Big Ten Championships, leaving the Spartans second in the conference both times.

Before a late-season meet in Alabama, MSU met as a team — gymnasts and coaches — and let it all out, everything they were feeling as they neared the postseason. They had been winning and performing well enough, but not as well they thought they could, especially on the balance beam, often a “make or break” event, as Jones described it, the event that had been their downfall at the regional a year earlier.

The whole season had been about dealing with “the elephant in the room,” Jones said, reaching the national championships.

“How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?” Jones said, taking the metaphor in a different direction than even Tom Izzo does — he calls it “The white elephant in the room.” “It’s not focusing every single week, every single day on being at the national championships, but taking it one bite at a time, one person at a time, one day at a time, one routine at a time in here (at practice at Jenison Field House), one skill at a time, to really get to be able to eventually tear that elephant down.”

MSU began to do so at the Big Ten meet, scoring a 198.50, highlighted by perfection from senior Gabi Stephen on the beam — a 10.0. Her 10.0 vault in the NCAA regional semifinals helped to catapult the Spartans into the regional final.

“We know what we’re capable of,” Stephen said. “It’s just about putting it all together. And I think that’s what we’ve been doing as we’ve been getting into postseason, people are noticing it. We’re hitting the 198 marks, and just like being a lot more consistent with our gymnastics and aggressive and having a lot of fun.”

They hit 198 again in the regional final in State College — and performed so decisively that it didn’t come down to a pressure-packed performance on the beam.

“We knew that Arkansas and Kentucky (the other two teams along with LSU) did not have a full lineup of 10.0-start value vaults, and we do,” Jones said. “So we knew that was an event that we could pull away on, but we had to land. That’s the risk versus reward. We’re doing these harder vaults. It could be great, but if any of them are a little short, they could be on their butt. It could be bad. But we are ranked in the top four in the country on vault for a reason — because they continue to deliver in that event, and they did, breaking the vault record, and then going to bars and pulling away.”

“We really have worked on our landings and those little details that make the difference from who goes to nationals and who doesn’t,” MSU senior Skyla Schulte said. “We were just fearless out there, and we told each other, ‘No fear. No risk, no reward.’ That mentality really got us to that next step that maybe we were holding back on in the years past.”

‘Goosebumps’

MSU’s gymnasts weren’t the only ones feeling pressure this season. The coaches — Rowe, Jones and assistant Devin Wright — badly wanted this particular group to be the one that got over the hump at the Sweet 16 level.

They had done everything else — winning four Big Ten titles, three in the regular season and the 2024 championship meet — since 2022, when they first came within a whisker of reaching the eight-team NCAA Championships. They, with the help of several notable gymnasts from recent years — the likes of Lea Mitchell through Baleigh Garcia and others — had done so much to elevate the program. And for Harkness, Stephen, Schulte the other seniors, this was the last chance to take the last step together.

“They were so instrumental. They believed in us,” Jones, MSU’s recruiting coordinator, said of this senior group. “They trusted us. They bought into the vision. They they were all in for what we were selling, because the program hadn’t done anything at that point. It was just a vision. It was what we wanted to do, but we knew that they would have the talent to help us do it.

“Some of them, it was a little easier to get them — Skyla, she wasn’t going anywhere else because her parents bleed green, and you always say, you luck out with that one. There were some of them that fell into place. Those kids committing to us helped other kids follow suit to be able to be where we are now. Then we get like a Nikki Smith, a Sage Kellerman.”

Smith, Kellerman and fellow junior Olivia Zsarmani each earned regular season All-American honors. All three joined Schulte, Stephen and Harkness on All-Big Ten teams. Schulte and Stephen earned first-team all-conference honors for the fourth straight season.

“To see them compete so fearlessly (at the NCAA regional final), you stand back and it just gives you goosebumps,” Jones continued, “just watching them continue to do exactly what you knew that they were capable of.”

While this national championships appearance is a culmination, it also, they hope, is a new standard. They’re excited about the 2025 and 2026 recruited classes. The six freshmen slated to join the program next season are, before they’re done, expecting to compete in the new arena being built on campus to house gymnastics, volleyball and wrestling.

“We had renderings and everything,” Rowe said of the new facility, “but didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes, that was moving at lightning speed.

“Even back in 2018, (an) architectural firm was here, they were talking about renovating (Jenison Field House) and asking what we want. They said, ‘Do you think you can win a Big Ten championship with the facility you have now?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we definitely can. But that’s not the question. I can’t recruit with this facility.’ ”

The packed house for their meet against Michigan at Breslin Center this January, Rowe believes, helped prove that MSU gymnastics had the community’s backing and deserved a new space for practice and meets on par with the teams they’re trying to beat.

Five-star recruits that wouldn’t return their calls years ago are calling back now. The prospect of a new building helps. But the winning does more.

“I think now going to the national championships, it’ll be different, too,” Jones said. “I think of like Arkansas, who beat us out last year to go to nationals, we lost some kids to them because they had just been at the national championships. And that’s where kids want to go.

“We also have kids that aren’t afraid to work, because they’re not all five-star recruits. They’re not all Skyla Schulte. Gabi Stephen was a three-star recruit, and now she’s here … scoring 10s in her senior year. Just a very overlooked athlete that turned out to be a gem.”

Jones, formerly Curler, knows what it’s like to be at the NCAA Championships — she went as individual in 2010 when she was a gymnast at MSU,

Same for Stephen, Schulte, Smith and Harkness, who’ve all made it as individuals. This is different.

“I’m just excited to have the whole team there,” Stephen said, “the energy, the size of the stadium, the arena, just every single experience, I know it’s going to be super duper special.”

The Spartans believe they have the goods to contend in Fort Worth, too. After all, they just nearly beat the defending champ in LSU and the pressure is now less.

“Getting here is the hard part,” Jones said. “Now whatever we do is kind of the cherry on top. We know that we can compete at the final day of the championships. We know that we could be on four on the floor. We are that talented. It just is going to come to the team that puts it together on that day.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.