When Kristin White accepted the job as Utah State’s women’s gymnastics coach in the summer of 2022, she did so knowing she had a major rebuild on her hands.
Her predecessor, Amy Smith, had taken the core of the Aggies’ program with her when she left for Clemson, South Carolina, to start a new Division 1 program.
In total, six Aggies — all of whom competed in at least 12 meets for USU during the 2021-22 season and had helped the Aggies win a conference title in the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference (MRGC) — left Utah State for Clemson.
To date, it remains the most significant series of transfer portal defections at the D1 level in the sport. Nearly 1/3 of Utah State gymnastics’ conference championship-winning roster up and left. They were within their rights to do so, but it left USU gutted.
“I knew it was going to be a big challenge,” White said. “I think we’re the only program still to this date that’s really been affected by the transfer portal, kind of like what you see in men’s basketball or football. It really hasn’t happened to another program quite to the level that happened with Utah State.”
Three years later, though, and Utah State is — in a lot of ways — back to where it was when it peaked under Smith.
The Aggies are conference champions again, having won the Mountain West Conference championships in the conference’s second season sponsoring women’s gymnastics. And tomorrow, Utah State will compete in an NCAA regional for the first time since the 2022 season, having qualified to compete against BYU in the Salt Lake City regional.
Both teams, Utah State and BYU, are ranked No. 32 and the winner of Wednesday’s first round/play-in meet will advance to the regional semifinals where they will compete against No. 4 Utah, No. 13 Stanford and Denver.
How did Utah State pull it off? How did White, her staff and the Aggies who stayed turn around the program in just three years?
The rebuild of Utah State gymnastics
White concedes now that she may have been a little too impatient with how quickly she expected Utah State to get back to winning conference titles/competing at NCAA regionals.
A former Oklahoma gymnast, who subsequently coached as an assistant at Oklahoma, Iowa State and Arizona State before taking the head coaching job in Logan, White initially thought she could come to USU and turn things around very quickly. Definitely faster than what actually took place.
“When I look back on it, I should have been a little bit more patient,” White said. “When I took the job, I thought it was going to just happen so quickly, right? I’ve been a part of some incredible programs and I thought it was going to be a little bit easier than it was, if I’m being honest with you.”
Instead, it was a grind. A challenge. And a test in creativity too.
At the very first, White needed to rebuild USU’s roster. To do that, she had to get creative.
So Utah State used the transfer portal to land a pair of gymnasts from Lindenwood, a Division 2 program — Payton Gatzlaff and Jenna Eagles. Neither gymnast had competed all that much for the Lions, and White notes that prior to her and her staff’s arrival Utah State probably wouldn’t have looked at any D2 gymnasts, let alone two who weren’t stars at the level.
But White needed gymnasts desperately and in Gatzlaff and Eagles she found a pair who, as she tells it, were driven to improve.
“I was really looking for athletes that were hungry, that wanted to continue to get better,” White said. And she found them in Gatzlaff and Eagles, both of whom have competed multiple events during their time at Utah State and have proven able to earn scores in the high 9.8s and low 9.9s.
“When I think about the two of them and just the growth they’ve had over the last three years, it’s been phenomenal,” White said. “I mean, neither one of them competed very much at Lindenwood prior to coming to Utah State, and they’ve been some of our top performers. ... They’ve been hitting on all cylinders and competing multiple events.”
Gatzlaff and Eagles were only the beginning though.
The Utah State staff, which includes former Utah assistant Robert Ladanyi and former Florida standout Rachel Slocum, went out and recruited undervalued, under-the-radar gymnasts, the kind who were available because they needed real training and development and/or had suffered an injury that had taken them out of the limelight. But all had a real desire to improve.
“It was really just finding those athletes that are hungry, that want to get better,” White said. “We knew that we were going to have to teach a lot of gymnastics and do a lot of technical training to get our athletes where we wanted them to be. Even some of the people who were already on our team hadn’t vaulted since their senior year in high school.
“We had to go back and teach them kind of the basics of vault to get them where we need them to be. It was a complete rebuild and we had to hit the recruiting ground pretty heavily. We were able to find some phenomenal athletes our first year ... some really talented young women that kind of started a little bit of the rebuild.”
It took time, though. Time to teach. Time to develop. White described it as nothing short of a real challenge.
“These three years have been a grind,” she said. “It’s really tested our staff and our preparation, and really just gave us a great opportunity to enhance our culture at Utah State.”
Year 1 of the White era ended with Utah State ranking No. 43 in the country and not qualifying for NCAA regionals. Maybe more painful, the Aggies finished last at the MRGC championships in 2023, nearly eight-tenths of a point behind third-place finishing Boise State.
In 2024, Utah State got much better, even if that didn’t completely appear to be the case. The Aggies actually finished the season with a worse ranking (45) and didn’t qualify for regionals again, but they nearly won the Mountain West Conference title, finishing second behind Boise State at the conference championships by half a tenth of a point.
The present and future of Utah State gymnastics
It was USU’s near upset of Boise State at the MWC championships in 2024 that gave White a glimpse into what this year’s team would be.
Behind then senior Brianna Brooks (Brooks is now a graduate senior), Utah State showed something that it hadn’t previously, not since Smith left for Clemson.
“I saw that this team actually has it in them,” White said. “And for the first time after that meet, I could tell that they wanted it like that. That meet was really special, because the feeling that we had going into it was different than any other feeling that we had had the two years that I had been here.”
Utah State brought in an intriguing group of freshmen, headlined by 4-star recruit Lundyn VanderToolen.
VanderToolen, a club teammate of Avery Neff’s at Olympus Gymnastics, hasn’t disappointed despite dealing with a difficult fall that has since limited her to two events. And her fellow freshmen Olivia Orengo and Kaylie Medrano have had similar impacts.
The freshmen have been game-changers for a program that was trending upward before their arrival.
“They’ve (VanderToolen, Orengo and Medrano) competed anywhere from eight routines as a group this year all the way up to 10,” White said. “That is a significant amount of lineup spots. And they’ve competed at a very high level. We’ve relied on them a ton.”
It has been encouraging for the freshmen themselves, to be so involved so early in their collegiate careers.
“It’s been really cool just as a freshman,” VanderToolen said. “Being able to compete for an amazing team and to be able to put so much towards this team has been a really amazing experience.”
The 2025 season hasn’t been a perfect year for Utah State by any means.
The Aggies started the year with back-to-back scores in the 194 range. Far below where they wanted to be. Slowly but surely however, the team improved. Grew stronger.
There was a victory over BYU at The Best of Utah. There was a close loss at No. 6 Cal. There was a regular season win over Boise State. And then, at the MWC championships, the Aggies made good on one of the more notable preseason goals. They won the conference title by defeating Boise State, Air Force and San Jose State.
“Honestly, it just felt out of this world,” VanderToolen said. “It had been a goal of ours from the very beginning, ever since I stepped on campus. (Winning the conference) has been what we talked about. We were so close last year, and so to be able to accomplish that goal, to be able to see all of our hard work that we put in pay off was just an amazing experience.”
Winning the conference title wasn’t the only goal, though.
A berth at NCAA regionals, the return of Utah State to postseason, was as well. The Aggies secured that too by getting a play-in spot. A victory over BYU on the national stage would propel USU into the regional semifinals and only further validate the rebuild that has happened in Logan.
Don’t be confused, Utah State wants that validation.
“I’ve talked a lot about we’ve got to have the same mindset going into the meet tomorrow that we had for the Mountain West championships,” White said. “There was no doubt in my mind that this team wanted to win, so if we go in with that same mindset tomorrow, I know that we can achieve that.
“(Beating BYU) will be the extra icing on the cake for the season that we’ve already had,” she added. “They (the Aggies) have put in a lot of work and want this program to be successful. They’ve put in blood, sweat and tears. To leave a legacy of being the team that brought Utah State back would just solidify all the hard work and dedication they’ve put in over the last couple of years.”
That is what this new era of Utah State gymnastics boils down to.
“I’ve learned something over time,” White said. “Patience and perseverance is going to get you where you want to be.”
