“This is all I ever wanted to do,” fifth-year and AAI Award finalist Kyla Bryant said. “I was never one to be like ‘Let’s go to the Olympics!’ Put me on a college team, put me in an arena with 10,000 people, screaming teammates, all that jazz. I wanted it, I wanted it. And I feel like I’ve got it. I’m just super grateful.”
As No. 29 Stanford prepares to face San Jose State in round one of the Seattle Regional on Wednesday, the focus is simple. The Cardinal wants to be as excellent as it can be. The goal isn’t a specific number or a placement. Those things are uncontrollable. Tabitha Yim wants her team to compete with gratitude and represent the program to the best of its ability.
Yim was a Stanford gymnast from 2005-2008. The 14-time All-American led her team to two Super Six appearances. Returning to the Farm as an assistant under Kristen Smyth in 2010, Yim coached her alma mater to four Super Six appearances and its two program-best team totals. She left for a head coaching role at Arizona in 2016, only to return to lead the Cardinal in 2018.
Stanford is in Yim’s blood, so the decision to come back wasn’t a hard one.
“I’ve always really loved this place,” she said. “It always felt like home.”
To Yim, Stanford sets itself apart not just by its high academic standards and rigor, but also by the gymnastics program’s focus on doing things right: The slow, steady build to achieve big things while honoring values and legacy. Yim credits Smyth with mentoring her, and acknowledges that she made mistakes as a young coach at the helm in the beginning of her tenure but learned lessons that led her to where she is today.
Finally, this season, she’s starting to see the foundational groundwork she laid pay off, and the 2022 team is laying the stepping stones to return Stanford to the perennial nationals threat it once was. The Cardinal put up a 196.975—its highest score since 2016—in March.
“I definitely credit all the work and all the hours and all the people that have come before that really helped us get to this point,” Yim said. The team’s motto for the year, Flip the Script, acknowledges that the previous four years weren’t reflective of the goals the Cardinal had set or the group it wanted to be and was capable of.
“We are super bold,” Bryant said of her 2022 teammates. They’re focused and committed to flipping the script and being better for each other. It’s about communicating, supporting each other and discussing the action behind the motto. “It’s something I’ve not experience before, and it’s super fun.”
Stanford’s breakout season comes after two very challenging years. The Farm is located in Santa Clara County, California, the county that had the most restrictive COVID rules in the country during the 2021 season. The team was forced to train outside, on a concourse outside a concession stand in the football stadium. Yim, with a sense of humor, mentioned that the team was able to interact with wildlife during training, something that was unique to the year.
Student-athletes were only able to return to Stanford’s campus in January 2021. Their outdoor gymnastics training began the same week most teams competed for the first time. Several gymnasts opted out of the season, wary of the odd training environment and strict housing rules for the year. Yim noted that those athletes were simply taking care of their own mental health in dealing with the transition out of the strictest lockdowns, a new element for student-athletes to juggle.
“It was traumatic. I’m not going to try to sugarcoat it,” she said, noting the lack of closure in particular for the 2020 seniors who missed their final postseason and weren’t able to walk in their graduation. “It really bonded us,” she said laughing. “But I never would wish it on anyone, and I never want to do it again in my entire life.”
It was tough for then-senior Bryant, too. She wanted more than a handful of meets for her final season. When she sat down and thought about the talented class entering in 2022, she ultimately decided to return for her year of extra eligibility to have another leadership opportunity and to be part of one more complete season.
It’s especially difficult for Yim that COVID hindered her ability to provide the kind of experience she promises to student-athletes and their parents during the recruiting process. When Stanford athletes who did choose to compete in 2021 stepped out on the floor, they were much less prepared than other teams and than they would be in a normal season.
“We really had to swallow our pride,” Yim said. “Our definition of success was so different than anyone else’s, but that wasn’t going to take away from what we were trying to build.”
Stanford walked away from the 2021 season feeling proud and having a new resiliency and a lack of interest in external definitions of success that have carried over into 2022 competition. Those lessons learned are part of the flipping the script ideal for the season.
“When I first came here, it was a little challenging,” said first-year assistant coach Vince Smurro, who joined the Cardinal in July after a tenure at Iowa. He was nervous about the status of the team both in gymnastics skill level and culturally after two very strange years.
“In the short seven or eight months I’ve been here, I’ve seen a completely different team. Not only athletically but culturally and in their attitude. I see it every day when we step inside the gym,” Smurro said.
Yim credits the seniors with strong leadership and communication around the 2022 goals, and emphasized that they’ve been passionate about encouraging the team to enjoy every moment because it can be gone in a flash.
Another theme of the season is gratitude. It’s what got Bryant through the ups and downs of 2021, and she recognizes after having two abbreviated seasons that she shouldn’t take any week, practice or turn for granted. She would do it all again, challenges and all.
“This is not mundane,” Bryant said she reminds her teammates. “You being a student-athlete here at Stanford is not mundane.”
For Yim and her team, this season is about building. It’s the first chapter in the future of the program, something the whole team has taken pride in and feels a responsibility for. Bryant explicitly mentioned that the team is conscious of the greater goals of changing the program.
“It’s a grind,” she said. “It’s always been a goal of mine to make a change on this campus and in this program and to leave a footprint.” Bryant is conscious of her part in the Stanford legacy and is determined to leave her mark and end her career fully maxed out.
Cardinal great Elizabeth Price is a friend and mentor to Bryant. Price was a senior when Bryant was a freshman and helped Bryant adjust to the Stanford culture. Bryant strives to continue Price’s legacy in the program and to treat the current underclassmen with the grace that was shown to her.
For Yim and her staff, a piece of the future-building is recruiting. Stanford demands a certain academic standard and personality type, but Yim is quick to point out that gymnasts who might not think they fit the Stanford mold can be successful on the Farm. She herself didn’t think she’d fit in when she was accepted, before falling in love with the school. Smurro said Yim and assistant coach Alexandra Pintchouk know innately what a “Stanford kid” is like, and it’s an awareness he’s working to learn as he becomes more familiar with the Stanford culture.
So far, Yim’s recruiting efforts have been extremely successful. Her 2022 class is ranked No. 2 nationally, and the 2023 class is ranked No. 4. The latter group is already close and has a big goal: All four commits already have their eyes set on the Cardinal’s first NCAA national title.
Yim and Smurro aren’t shy about the big goal either.
“We want to win. I believe that the recruiting classes we have coming in in ’22 and ’23 will allow us to do that,” Smurro said.
While a national title is explicitly on everyone’s minds, it’s not in the day-to-day conversation. Yim’s lofty goals are what piqued Smurro’s interest in joining the staff in the first place.
“It’s striving for excellence in everything that we do, whether that’s in the gym or in the classroom,” Yim said when asked what the team’s stated goal is. She focuses on the controllable factors: being prepared, having depth, building confidence.
Stanford’s history as a title contender is constantly on Yim’s mind, both as an alumna of the program and as its leader. She strives to honor that legacy and views her role as the current custodian of the Cardinal’s history as an honor and privilege.
“I feel like it is my responsibility to honor the legacy of all the women that have come before us, who blazed the trail for Stanford,” Yim said. “We want to win. We want to be a national championship program. But we want to do it the right way and with the right culture and the right people.”
Smurro pointed out that having two alumnae leading the program—Pintchouk and Yim were teammates from 2005-2008—lends weight to everything they do because they are so invested in the work. “She’s one of the most hardworking people I know,” Smurro said of Yim.
“Tabitha is extremely patient,” Bryant said. It was the first word that came to her to describe the coach she greatly admires. That patience shows in Yim’s entire project to rebuild the Stanford program. She’s in no rush to accomplish things quickly; the focus is squarely on preparation, culture and building on the legacy that already exists.
Bryant acknowledges and aspires to the legacy, too. She grew up training at a club gym near the University of Georgia during its heyday and was coached by a two-time Honda Award winner; she long aspired to that level of greatness. When she learned she was an AAI Award finalist, Bryant’s first thoughts were to legacy and leaving a mark of excellence.
“All the hard work is paying off,” she said. “I had a lot of gratitude. I reflected on everybody who has helped me get to this point.”
It hasn’t sunk in yet for Bryant that she’s closing out her final season. She doesn’t have the time to be emotional just yet. “I’ve got stuff to do!”
READ THIS NEXT: For Denver’s Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart, Values Must Be Lived
Article by Emily Minehart
Like what you see? Consider donating to support our efforts throughout the year! [wpedon id=”13158″]
5 comments