2022 Coaching Changes (vacancies in post 100)

[irichluck21]

Makes sense to do that for any sport really.
Fill out a survey if you leave the program, transfer schools, etc.
At least for student athletes it makes sense.
After all there are course evaluations for professors, why not a coaching/ sports program evaluation.

 

[GLeigh]

It’s a shame for the school and program that this is going to do a lot of damage. I doubt many athletes are going to want to commit and I don’t blame them in the slightest, but this was meant to become a top-tier program and the recruitment struggles they’ll likely have at Nationals as well as being way behind on C/O 2023 recruitment will likely be very difficult to overcome.

 

[cuuf]

this was meant to become a top-tier program

Who declared that? What program in the ACC has ever been a top tier program that would indicate Clemson would be one? Perhaps you meant there was a lot of excitement about a new D1 program?

I get the comments about the twitter mob, and there is certainly validity in that. But I would also, on the same side, caution about obfuscating what these gymnasts that have come forward are saying with general sense of mob reaction. These gymnasts obviously felt something and throwing their comments in with the malaise of twitter mobs creates an out for genuine discussion and evaluation. Like many things today, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Is Amy the second coming of Karolyis? Probably not. Are their valid questions about how she communicates and handles her gymnasts? Perhaps. Maybe its just that gymnastics is a low tier college sport (contrary to how most of us feel around here) and athletic departments just don’t invest that much in background checks and vetting? UF just fired their soccer coach after one year because he apparently was highly critical of the athletes weight management and exercise regimen and was just abrasive with athletes. Somehow he feel through the vetting process. Perhaps this is just as simple as an Occams razor explanation?

 

[GLeigh]

It seems like that is what Clemson is going for. The associate athletic director said he believed Clemson was going to become very competitive, very quickly and that the Athletics Department was going “all in” to ensure success. I suppose he may have been talking more at the ACC level however. https://collegegymnews.com/2021/09/10/clemson-goes-all-in-on-acc-gymnastics/

 

[cuuf]

Lol, ya, have you heard of the term “coach speak”? The same applies for “athletic director speak”. I think they are just talking the game for their boosters and fans. I mean what AD is going to say “we are going to be average program and hopefully in 10-15 years we might make the NCAA finals” to fire up their base.

 

[GLeigh]

Lol, fair enough. I suppose I just hope for some grains of truth within the “athletic director speak”. It’d be nice if programs could focus on exaggerating their advantages instead of straight up lying if this is the case. In my opinion, it still sounds pretty good to say “We expect to be competing for the ACC title even within the first few years, continuing our coach’s trend of continuously improving her team’s results, and attracting talented athletes due to our strong athletic program and state-of-the-art training facilities.” CGN also seems to be taking the claims relatively seriously as they’ve mentioned them expecting to be competitive quickly in a couple of their articles, so they might be thinking top recruits will be interested in being part of a program from the beginning or be attracted by their generally strong athletics, but they might also just be taking people at their word… Regardless of Clemson’s expectations however, I think there will definitely be negative recruiting repercussions which was my main point.

 

[cuuf]

Meh, I think more wish casting than fact. Although the ACC is only UNC, NC State, Pitt and Clemson. Not exactly murder’s row to win. But all those programs except maybe Pitt? have significant facility upgrades, etc.

Regardless who they hired, I doubt they will/would have significant success in “loading” their roster in elites and significant transfers to be suddenly competitive. Clemson is also one of the smaller college towns and has a very unique southern baptisty type culture couple with average academics. I agree, this type of negativity wont help.

 

[irichluck21]

Clemson might have these big aspirations but despite being a Big 5 conference and having a large history, having been founded in 1953, ACC has always had a minimum participation in gymnastics.

The ACC first and last championship was in 1984 when the league consisted of North Carolina (1981), Duke (1984), Maryland (1981), and NC State (1981). Duke discontinued its gymnastics program after one year. As a result, with less than 4 teams the ACC no longer sponsored a gymnastics league or championship. ACC was supposed to return to a 4 team conference in 2014-2015 season with the addition of Pittsburgh joining the ACC, but Maryland announced it was joining Big Tens in 2014 so that was scrapped.

North Carolina, NC state have 41 years of gymnastics history and Pittsburgh 40.
Pittsburgh has one national champion Lisa Shirk (UB-1982), North Carolina has 2 FX national championships from Courtney Bumpers in 2004 and 2005.
Only NC State has managed to make a full team to NCAAs and only once in 1998 when they finished 5th in the morning session for 11th place overall.

When the ACC holds the 2024 conference championship, it will be the first time in 40 years.
There is no gymnastics tradition for the ACC, so it will take sometime before it can gain traction or prestige, if at all.

So yeah, if UNC, Pitt, and NC State have been around for 40+ years with minimal top tier national success, it will take a long time for Clemson to be competitive. The Tigers are likely to remain with these 3 teams in the 30s and 40s. Their first year they should expect rankings in the 60s.
LIU is in year 2 and improved drastically since its first season and only ranked 55th, which was a drop from 54th last season (granted many teams out due to COVID).

It isn’t like UNC and NC State aren’t super competitive in terms of athletics.
UNC is ranked 1st in the ACC with 265 conference titles and 45 NCAA championships, Maryland (left in 2014-15) is still second with 196 ACC titles and 31 NCAA championships, Virginia is 3rd with 157 ACC and 28 NCAA, NC State is 4th with 143 ACC and 3 NCAA, and Clemson is 5th with 135 ACC titles and 4 NCAA championships.

So it will be interesting to see if gymnastics begins to rise up to the level of the other sports in terms of competing for a national championship.

It will also be interesting to see if any other universities add gymnastics teams. I could see Virginia, Duke, Florida State, Miami add teams. Especially since gymnastics is more popular than it has ever been and we know the sport can bring in the fans.
There are successful club teams at Miami, Florida State, Virginia, and Wake Forest already. So while club gymnastics is typically level 7-9 athletes there is clear interest for walk-ons at these universities.

FYI Clemson also has a top ranked club team:
several gymnasts have made event finals at NAIGC nationals.
So there is potential for several gymnasts to maybe walk onto the team or even get a scholarship as a specialist.
Maybe having a strong club team will be helpful to rebuilding a program.

Clemson is attractive for men’s sports. Basketball, Football, and Soccer.

We shall see!

 

[choclatechip45]

I think Clemson thinks they can be attractive because they have done so well in Football and can show recruits that if they want a traditional college experience with a good football team. Also helps they are on the east coast. If you want to go to college in the south, but not at an SEC school which is why I thought they would go with a high profile coach.

 

[Sparklesmom]

I suspect that Clemson will be a hot ticket for many top level 10 recruits. Plus that school likes to win at athletics. All athletics. They have the cash and they will be pouring it into the program. FYI it doesn’t take a bunch of elites to win NCAA’s. If that was the case Florida would take it every year.

 

[cuuf]

I dont know where this narrative of Clemson is good at everything comes from? Their football team has experienced an era of success that appears to be on the downswing now, but other than that Clemson has been an average to mediocre athletic program. All their other athletic programs are meh. Do they have money? Sure as part of a P5 conference, but not SEC money. I really don’t see a strong reason why “top level 10 recruits” would be flocking to the program. I really think people are just excited that is a new program in a P5 conference with some name recognition and that is awesome. But when you start critically evaluating all the factors that might go into deciding one school over another they don’t have too many in the win column. Average academics, small southern college town (may be a plus to some), low visibility, low NIL, small regional alumni base.

And no you don’t need a squad of elites to win NCAA’s but you do need a few.

 

[barefoot]

I was excited about the new Clemson team but I’m going to find it hard to support a team with Amy Smith at the helm. I don’t think it’s just a handful of disgruntled “I didn’t know NCAA gymnastics would be so hard” college students anymore. Quite a number of her former gymnasts - including from as far back as her days as an assistant at UNC - have come forward at this point, and more than 20 gymnasts left the program in less than 3 years. That’s not normal turnover for any gymnastics program. If I were a gymnast who was considering Clemson, I’d start looking elsewhere pretty quickly.

 

[Bananna]

Off the Clemson topic, but I’m curious as to how much longer Heather Brink has at Nebraska. Their downturn from a consistent nationals challenging team (last in Super Six in 2018) to missing regionals twice in a row has been quite dramatic. They’ve lost a couple of their commits, as well as some contributing gymnasts to retirement/transfers.

 

[Sparklesmom]

I read online somewhere that Amy had cancer not too long ago? Can anyone confirm that?

 

[rlayt]

Chris Waller’s brother reveals things.

 

[KristyJ]

Looks like the original tweet/account are gone now?

 

[irichluck21]

That is sheer stupidity.
What is done is done. Waller resigned already. No need to turn around and call the gymnasts liars.
What does this accomplish? It makes him look worse, honestly.

 

[cuuf]

Really, take away the whole episode, his results were pretty lackluster for one of the premier gymnastics programs given the amount of talent and the state of the program he was handed. The AJ episode certainly didn’t help things, but I think the end result would have been the same, with his contract not being renewed and him “resigning”. Just leave it at that, he would look much better.

 

[irichluck21]

Really, take away the whole episode, his results were pretty lackluster for one of the premier gymnastics programs given the amount of talent and the state of the program he was handed.

How so though?
I don’t understand the narrative that Waller didn’t produce results.
2020: COVID ended the season before conference championships. UCLA was ranked #3 by NQS.
2021: UCLA finished 12th, which was actually a decent result considering the loss of that 2020 senior class and the large group of freshman that deferred due to Olympics being postponed.
2022: UCLA finished 12th, but was just .025 away from making Nationals.

I’m glad he is gone, but to say that the results alone should have been enough to get rid of him is a bit misplaced.
There are other coaches who have had far worse results in similar time.

 

[cuuf]

How so though?

I agree it can be debatable, but for me, UCLA is really a top 3 all-time program. Therefore, the demands/expectations to maintain that level are higher than the average position. Much like Utah, I would expect UCLA to be a top 4 team every year on average. And perhaps the results were not horrible, compared to most programs. But even with Covid year there was too much variability in UCLA’s performance over the 3 years to have a measut re of faith that it was an anomaly versus the trend. Its a fine line, another 2-3 years of finishing 12 and then you trend towards Georgia or Alabama.