Jan
25
Gymnastics recruits flying in from all over
January 25, 2023 | 1 Comment
When building a sports team, coaches typically build and stick to a certain list of attributes and qualities within their athletes. This type of guide likely varies coach to coach, as no team is the same.
The UW-Whitewater women’s gymnastics team is mainly recruited by assistant coaches Chloe Edgren and Siri Bartlein with some guidance from head coach Jennifer Regan. One of the more unique things about the team is that they actually have gymnasts from 14 different states besides Wisconsin and even one from Canada.
“Our philosophy changed after I was here for a couple of years and decided we needed to go out of state,” Regan said. “Not because there wasn’t the level of the gymnasts that we want here, it’s just that in order to stay competitive within our conference we needed to explore outside of our borders.”
Some of the states the women are from include Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. It may seem strange to some people for gymnasts to come all the way to Wisconsin for D3 gymnastics, but there’s actually only 81 programs for gymnastics across the county, with 6 being in Wisconsin, according to ncsasports.org.
So Regan says she looks to create a second home for the athletes, especially since many of them came from further away.
“It’s all about getting to know the athletes and their families. Because when they drop them off, they know that they’re going to be ours 1000s of miles away, and they want to know that they’re going to be well taken care of and well supported,” Regan said. “So I think having gymnasts from different states brings a combination of things, but definitely it brings people from different areas and different backgrounds, which gets us to figure out how we can all connect and create our own little family here.”
Despite creating a comfortable environment, Regan still says that she wants to challenge her athletes and the coaches all “hold academics very, very highly” in their athletes’ priorities. Her coaching style focuses on pushing her athletes to be the best they can, and not just in gymnastics.
“We’ve won five national championships and we’ve won five conference championships so I think there’s tradition,” Regan said. “They want to win. They want to be successful. They want to continue to improve their gymnastics, I think that’s another big piece is that they’re just not going to stop here. But they’re going to continue to grow.”
Overall Regan says she wants to support her athletes in all the ways she can, especially since she is recruiting people who aren’t necessarily the most familiar with Wisconsin. To her, it’s all about creating opportunities for gymnasts, and keeping them on that track to be successful.
“It’s us as coaches trying to open the doors for other opportunities,” Regan said. “Opportunities to other individuals that they didn’t think they had because maybe their state doesn’t offer that. It’s important to us to be getting this great university known to so many more people, because we don’t have to stay within our borders, and we will continue doing so.”
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