Note: This piece uses “men” and “women” throughout in accordance with the names of gymnastics disciplines, and not as an assumption of the gender identities of athletes in those disciplines.
“Do you want to coach women’s gymnastics?”
Alabama head coach Ashley Johnston remembers the text message that precipitated one of the most dramatic assistant hirings in recent memory a little differently—she recalls typing, “What would it take?”—but regardless of the content, this message to Justin Spring was the catalyst.
Spring—Illinois alumnus, Olympian and longtime Illini men’s head coach—and Johnston met briefly when both traveled as athletes with the United States National Team to a World Cup in Ghent, Belgium in 2006. The pair didn’t interact much, though, since Johnston is much younger. They became more familiar in 2017 when the then-new Illinois women’s head coach Nadalie Walsh added Johnston to her staff for the 2018 season.
Though Johnston was only at Illinois for about 10 months before getting the opportunity to join Jeff Graba at Auburn, she and Spring made impressions on each other in Champaign. Spring recalls respecting her coaching style and philosophies.
“He brought so much enthusiasm and so much fun into the gym,” Johnston said of watching Spring’s coaching at Illinois. She was also impressed with the space he gave for his athletes to make mistakes and to be themselves.
Fast forward to May 2022 in Mesa, Arizona, at the USA Gymnastics Developmental Program National Championships. Johnston and Spring ran into each other again; 2022 was the first season that the men’s and women’s competitions were held together, and both were attending a social gathering for coaches during the weekend.
A few weeks later, Johnston was named the new Alabama head coach. Spring reached out to congratulate her, and she responded asking if he had any graduating seniors on his men’s team who were interested in volunteer roles to aid in spotting and learning about coaching on the women’s side.
Some Illini men were looking to move into women’s coaching—Ross Thompson, one of Spring’s gymnasts, is now an assistant for Walsh—but the timing wasn’t right for any of them to make the move to Alabama. Spring said she should keep him on her shortlist if any full-time positions ever opened up.
“During those conversations, I kept thinking he would be the perfect fit,” Johnston said. Two weeks later, she sent the pivotal text.
He texted back hesitantly, but then immediately called back to express interest.
Spring joined the Illinois men’s staff in 2010. In his time there, 11 Illini won national titles, and the team took home the top prize in 2012. He was one of the most well-known faces in Illinois Athletics after a decorated career as an Illinois gymnast himself.
In the past, when Spring had offers to leave Illinois, his wife—who is a career counselor—was the voice of reason. She would point out that a salary was too low or it didn’t make sense to move their family. When Spring got off an hours-long Zoom call with Johnston and assistant Gina Quinlan to talk about the position, he opened the bedroom door to find his wife standing just on the other side.
After listening to the whole call, she was on board. The salary and the prestige of the SEC and Alabama gymnastics all just made sense. With his trusted voice of reason pushing to make the change, the seriousness of the decision hit.
“That’s when my heart sank,” Spring said. He had to go through what he described as a breakup with his current position before getting excited about the move.
“I’ve driven into that parking lot, walked into that locker room, six times a week…literally five thousand times over the last 20 years. Maybe even more. And this is the last time I do this,” Spring said of his final meeting with his Illinois team.
It brought tears to his eyes recounting that day. He was “a mess” in the meeting. Women’s gymnastics always seemed like a viable option, but in a vague sense. Suddenly, Spring was leaving his home of 20 years and athletes he cared about deeply.
While walking away from men’s gymnastics was a heartbreaking decision, Spring did it in part because he fears for the future of the sport at the college level. Olympic sports are on athletic department chopping blocks across the country, as NIL laws increasingly make the cost of sponsoring teams higher. Title IX often pushes cuts to men’s Olympic sports in favor of preserving huge revenue-generating rosters.
Even legendary programs haven’t been safe, with Iowa and Minnesota losing their men’s teams recently. Spring doesn’t see a bright future for men’s Division I gymnastics, and made the move partly for the sake of his long-term career.
“That was half my panic, was being a 40-something-year-old who had only ever done this one thing,” he said, comparing coaching a men’s team to being a CD salesman, selling a product some people are still passionate about but that is consistently in decline.
The Alabama women learned the news of Spring’s hiring over a video call, since some of them were still scattered about returning to Tuscaloosa from summer break. Senior Makarri Doggette remembers being surprised. Some of her teammates knew who Spring was, but many, including Doggette, didn’t. They started Googling, and got excited reading about all of his accomplishments.
The first few days of practice weren’t as chaotic as one might assume. Doggette remembers Spring watching bars and saying, “What’s that called?!” about skills men don’t compete on high bar, and thinking, “Oh boy. This’ll be fun.”
Her fears were quickly assuaged, though. Johnston doesn’t remember any funny mishaps or big adjustments as Spring learned the ropes. For his part, the most shocking thing was not having to move mats for the stations he was coaching.
“A manager saw me picking up a mat, and he was like, ‘What are you doing?'” he said. Now Spring can hardly remember how he ran practices without managers to change equipment settings and set springboards, let alone without the huge support staff around the team at Alabama.
A few days into his Alabama tenure, Johnston and Quinlan were both gone recruiting. Spring was left to run his first women’s practice.
“Alight, women’s gymnastics, here we go!” he thought. Johnston suggested he run a stick competition, which proved to be eye-opening. The second skill Spring had the gymnasts stick was a front half, which to his surprise they found to be a very odd request.
To Spring, that moment highlighted different areas of emphasis the women had had in their training than he was used to in men’s backgrounds. That realization led to reworking some tumbling and helping the team think about seeing landings in new ways that more closely echoed techniques the men use.
In the gym, Spring is the primary vault coach, and he works with the floor group on tumbling. His biggest focus has been working with the team on air awareness. Fans can expect to see some full-ins altered to half-in half-outs this year; gymnasts who perform double backs with a full twist had often traditionally been completing the twist during the first salto. Now many will be performing a half twist in each salto, “cruising” the twist the way many men complete the skill.
To the eye, the twisting will look a little slower and smother. To the gymnasts, it will be easier to see the landing, since they will be moving forward as they come out of the first salto and able to watch the ground as they complete the second half twist.
Spring has been working on landing mechanics and spatial and air awareness across tumbling skills, bringing gymnasts back to the trampoline to refine and perfect landings across events. So far, he’s noticed a difference in the gymnasts’ levels of fear. He teared up talking about watching things click and feel exciting for his athletes.
“Gymnastics is supposed to be fun, not scary!” he said.
Johnston and Doggette echoed that call for fun. To both, the thing that stands out most about Spring is his great energy and enthusiasm. Doggette pointed out his positivity as well, pointing to playing games before practice starts to loosen up and start the day with high energy.
“I think that’s something in women’s gymnastics that we need to instill back into our sport,” Johnston said.
Fans can expect to see that energy reflected in Coleman Coliseum this year. Johnston is working to revitalize the excitement around the program after fans felt a bit disconnected the past two seasons due to the pandemic, in the hopes that her team can feel the excitement of running into a sold-out crowd at home.
Alabama opens the season against Michigan State at home on January 6. Crimson Tide faithful can expect a loud, energetic team with its sights set on meeting every challenge head on—”meeting the moment.” To Doggette, that motto includes everything from time in the gym to adjusting to all of the coaching changes. She hopes to compete in the all-around this year.
Long term, the team goal is to compete in the national final, but Johnston doesn’t want her gymnasts to get bogged down in the big goal or in the past. The focus is on the day-to-day, one challenge at a time: seeing the landing.
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The professionalism and awesome analysis in this article made it fun to read. Congratulations to both Justin and Ashley. The Note* was handled tremendously well and I will use that framework moving forward when addressing gymnastics. Thank you for a great read!
He was a great hire. I got a chance to meet him and spend time with him at Flipfest. He was very positive and had a way using the right words to provide feedback. Very good Coach and person. He’s a difference maker in providing the right culture for a program.