More than two months have passed since the 2025 NCAA women’s gymnastics championship meet. Utah finished No. 4 in that competition, the Red Rocks’ sixth consecutive top four finish if you include the abbreviated 2020 season.
The last time the Red Rocks had that many consecutive top four finishes was in the early-to-mid 90s, albeit that stretch included three national championships.
At this point in the summer, transfers have largely picked their new schools and recruits in the 2027 signing class can commit to schools. All of that is to say the 2025 season is truly over and done with, while 2026 beckons.
That makes this as good a time as any to look closely at the head coaching tenure of Carly Dockendorf.
Dockendorf took over the Utah program in November of 2023 following the departure of Tom Farden. First named the interim coach and then quickly made the permanent leader of the Red Rocks less than a month later, Dockendorf has led Utah’s storied women’s gymnastics program for two seasons now.
She is beloved by her gymnasts, many of whom have gone out of their way on social media to praise their head coach, including Avery Neff, Camie Winger and Ella Zirbes this past season.
But has Dockendorf — who joined Utah prior to the 2018 season and moved her way up the coaching staff ladder — established herself as the right person to lead the Red Rocks now and in the future?
Wins and losses
Dockendorf has shined in this regard, even if Utah’s fourth place finish at this year’s NCAA championships left a bitter taste for many.
In her two years leading the Red Rocks, Utah has won 75% of its regular season meets, is undefeated at the conference championships (Pac-12 in 2024 and Big 12 in 2025), has defeated 83% of its opponents at NCAA regionals and has defeated more than half (58%) of the teams it has faced at the NCAA championships.
The Red Rocks have won and won a lot under Dockendorf, whose first two years are arguably the most successful first two years by a head coach in program history (the caveat is Greg Marsden built the program from scratch, while both Megan Marsden and Farden assumed co-head coaching duties when the program was in need of a rebuild in order to return to the top of the sport).
Of course, wins and losses (outside of conference and national championship meets) aren’t really the be-all, end-all in college gymnastics. For most of the season scores are paramount, and Utah’s scores under Dockendorf have also been very good.
In 2024, Utah’s final national qualifying score (NQS) during the regular season was 197.895 and the team scored above a 197.5 a total of 13 times, including the postseason.
In 2025, Utah’s final national qualifying score (NQS) during the regular season was 197.780 and the team scored above a 197.5 a total of seven times, including the postseason.
The drop in 197.5-plus scores from one year to the next is a little concerning. In 2025 Utah wasn’t as consistently great over the course of the season as many of the top contenders, and perhaps most concerning the Red Rocks had some poor showings, with a 196 in four meets.
It is important to note, though, that outside of Oklahoma, LSU and Florida, few teams regularly scored above a 197.5 last season. UCLA finished the year No. 2 in the country and the Bruins only scored a 197.5 or better in just over half of their meets.
As it compares to the rest of the best in the NCAA, Utah hasn’t been far away from the top. During both the 2024 and 2025 regular seasons, only Oklahoma, LSU and Florida were consistently better than Utah, and once the postseason rolled around, none of those three teams have been as consistent as Utah has the last two years, though Oklahoma and LSU were better when it mattered most as the last two national champs.
Dockendorf through her first two seasons leading Utah also compares favorably with the other top coaches in the sport at the beginning of their tenures at their current schools.
Jenny Rowland succeeded Rhonda Faehn at Florida and Faehn was nothing short of a legend at UF. She won nearly 80% of her meets over 12 seasons, including three national championships.
Similar to Dockendorf at Utah, Rowland took over a Florida program that was not in need of a rebuild, and she won a lot as a result. She went 8-2 in the regular season her first year and won the SEC championship before leading the Gators to a fourth place finish as the national championships.
In 2017, Rowland led the Gators to another 8-2 regular season record, and the Gators finished second at the SEC championships before finishing third overall in the national championship meet.
At LSU, Jay Clark was promoted to co-head coach alongside LSU great D-D Breaux in 2020 and then took over as the program’s sole head coach the following season.
In his first two years leading the Tigers, Clark went 14-2 (2020) and 5-3 (2021) in the regular season, coached a runner-up at the SEC championships in 2021 (the 2020 season was cut short due to the pandemic) and LSU finished fourth in the national semifinals that same year.
Give Clark an extra year (since the 2020 season wasn’t complete) and he won 70% of his regular season meets in the first two(ish) years, but didn’t win a conference title and didn’t make it to the national championship meet.
UCLA’s Janelle McDonald was hired ahead of the 2023 season, taking over a UCLA program that thrived in the late 2010s before stumbling during the Chris Waller era at the beginning of the 2020s.
In her first two years leading the Bruins, McDonald won 50% of her meets, finished second at the Pac-12 championships in consecutive years and the furthest UCLA advanced in the postseason was the national semifinals in 2023.
There is context to the start of each of the aforementioned coaches’ head coaching tenures at their current schools, but all three situations were the closest to resembling the Utah program that Dockendorf took over — a traditional blue-blood that recently said goodbye to a great coach — and there is a real argument that the start of Dockendorf’s head coaching career is the best among that group.
Coaching adjustments
There is more to coaching than just wins and losses, though.
Overall success in women’s college gymnastics (as in most sports) is a lot more dependent on the athletes themselves than on the coach.
It is the coach’s job, though, to put the right gymnasts in the lineup in the right order consistently in order to give a team the best chance for success in the now, while simultaneously building for future seasons.
For the most part, Dockendorf has proven adept at managing lineups.
In her first year leading the Red Rocks, Dockendorf had a experience-laden roster, featuring standouts such as Maile O’Keefe, Abby Paulson, Grace McCallum, Jaedyn Rucker and others.
In total Utah had seven upperclassmen (juniors or seniors) and Dockendorf relied heavily on them, particularly early in the season.
As things progressed, though, she managed to give young gymnasts such as Winger, Zirbes, Elizabeth Gantner and Ashley Glynn real opportunities to compete.
By the end of the year, all four of those underclassmen played critical roles in Utah’s success, and Dockendorf even pulled Rucker out of the floor exercise lineup in favor of Zirbes at nationals (Rucker had struggled with inconsistency most of the season, while Zirbes had consistently proven capable of good scores). She also inserted Gantner into the beam lineup, in place of then-junior Jaylene Gilstrap.
People had their complaints. Many fans wanted to see Glynn more involved on the uneven bars at the expense of senior Alani Sabado, for example, but for the most part, Dockendorf handled Utah’s lineups well her first season leading Utah.
The same could be said about Dockendorf in 2025. This time around, Utah had a younger team and Dockendorf wasn’t shy about relying on the younger gymnasts early on.
Neff was an all-around gymnast from the get-go and she didn’t disappoint. When Neff was injured, Dockendorf adjusted on the fly well, inserting Sarah Krump into the floor lineup, while giving Winger and Gantner more opportunities (Winger on floor and Gantner on beam).
Dockendorf also tested out freshman Zoe Johnson in exhibition in multiple meets, which eventually set the stage for Johnson to make it into both the floor and vault lineups later in the season.
That Utah survived Neff’s absence, a multi-week injury to Ana Padurariu and season-ending injuries to Rucker and freshman Poppy-Grace Stickler speaks to how well Dockendorf managed the lineups.
And at nationals, like she did the year before, Dockendorf pulled one of her better gymnasts (this time it was Winger on beam, where she was a regular season All-American) due to consistent struggles and the replacement shined (Gantner on beam in the national championship meet).
The two biggest complaints regarding Dockendorf’s handling of lineups through her first two years are:
- She stayed with struggling gymnasts (Rucker and Winger) for too long.
- She didn’t adjust Utah’s beam lineup (gymnasts in it or order in which they competed) quickly enough in 2025 to keep the event from morphing into the Red Rocks’ Achilles’ heel.
Those are fair criticisms, and refreshingly, Dockendorf doesn’t act like she has it all figured out. Following the national championship meet she noted that something happened to Utah on beam during a regular season meet at Arizona State and the team never really recovered on that event and Dockendorf didn’t know exactly what went wrong.
“We never regained full confidence in ourselves,” she said. “(After that meet) it just never felt like it felt before. There was kind of always someone who was a little bit off. I can’t put my finger on exactly why.”
Dockendorf has proven to favor more experienced gymnasts in lineups, but she also hasn’t held off (for too long, anyway) on making changes when necessary.
She probably hasn’t been perfect with her management of lineups (who is?), but Utah’s overall success speaks to her picking the right gymnasts at the right time the majority of the time.
Recruiting
Dockendorf’s predecessor at Utah valued recruiting above all else. If you wanted to get Farden excited, the solution was to talk to him about recruiting, and over the course of his tenure at Utah, he proved pretty adept at landing great gymnasts.
Among the many gymnasts Farden recruited (or helped recruit) to Utah were MyKayla Skinner, Maile O’Keefe, Abby Paulson, Grace McCallum, Kara Eaker, Makenna Smith and Avery Neff.
Dockendorf maybe isn’t as outwardly gung-ho as Farden was about recruiting, but she has proven pretty good at it. She was the primary recruiter for Stickler and fellow freshman Clara Raposo in the 2024 class, and Utah’s 2025 signing class (the incoming freshmen) is a notable one.
This summer the Red Rocks will bring in a pair of 5-star prospects in Bailey Stroud and Abigail “Abby” Ryssman. Stroud is ranked No. 6 overall in the class, while Ryssman, a one-time Denver commit, was vaulted into the 5-star tier this summer by College Gym News.
There is also a 4-star prospect in Norah Christian (once a Washington commit) and 3-star prospect Sage Curtis (she went to the same club gym as Neff and has scored a perfect 10 on vault).
Utah’s 2026 class (which will sign with the school in November) includes a 5-star prospect in Gabrielle Black, a 4-star prospect in Jazmyn Jimenez and an unrated prospect in Madison Denlinger.
Utah’s 2025 and 2026 classes may not be viewed as elite as some of the classes Farden signed, but 5-star prospects have comprised more than 40% of Utah signees and/or commits since Dockendorf took over.
What’s more, where Farden often went for and had success landing big names, thus far Dockendorf (and her staff) have had great success identifying gymnasts who are maybe underrated but have the potential to be stars.
Stroud, because of injuries, was initially a 3-star recruit, but once healthy she proved herself one of the best gymnasts in her class.
“Her 2024 started out somewhat slow,” College Gym News wrote, “but she crushed the end of the season with three straight (all-around) scores of 39. Her vault saw the biggest improvement this season, including an upgrade to a Yurchenko one and a half.”
Ryssman was once a solid 4-star recruit, but now will join the Red Rocks this fall as a top 30 prospect after winning a Level 10 national title this summer.
This time last year, Black was a 3-star recruit, but she had a monster year and is now the No. 7 prospect in the 2026 class, one spot behind Paris Olympian (and LSU commit) Hezley Rivera.
“Black improved on every event, but her biggest improvements came on vault, bars, and floor,” CGN’s Tara Graeve wrote. “She upgraded her skills while maintaining and improving her execution; her leaps on floor are notably improved.
“The Utah commit now boasts two potential 10.0 start value vault options and E skills on bars and floor, to name a few. ... While she improved her beam total slightly, it is her weakest event at the moment, and there’s plenty of room to improve her consistency and continue refining her form. Working to control her power on vault will go a long way as well, as she can overcook it at times.”
It is worth noting that Dockendorf started her collegiate coaching career at a Division II school (Seattle Pacific), where she had to recruit on developmental potential more than anything else — often without even seeing gymnasts in person, reduced to watching highlights sent by coaches because of a lack of funding.
Furthermore, all of her assistant coaches (Jimmy Pratt, Mike Hunger and Myia Hambrick) coached at the club level previously in their careers, with both Pratt and Hunger owning their own gyms.
Big names are nice and Utah needs to land them regularly, particularly in the revenue-sharing era of college athletics, but development and scouting are quickly becoming clear strengths for Utah under Dockendorf.
The right woman for the job?
After yet another season without a national title, Utah fans have every right to be dissatisfied with the Red Rocks.
While correctly considered one of the best women’s gymnastics programs in the country — due to nine NCAA national titles and a record 49 trips to the national championships — Utah has nonetheless failed to win a national championship for 30 years now.
For all the greats who’ve gone through the program since the mid-90s, the Red Rocks haven’t often proven capable of competing at their best when it matters most, in the final meet of the year. And when they have competed at their best, it hasn’t been quite good enough.
That has, through two seasons, held true under Dockendorf.
In every other way though, the Red Rocks’ latest head coach has looked the part. Under Dockendorf’s watch, Utah has remained one of the best programs in the country and has continued to recruit at a high level. The Red Rocks have proven capable under Dockendorf of competing at the level of the best programs in the country, and in big moments, too.
Is there room for improvement? Of course, and there always will be, but Utah appears to be in good hands with Dockendorf and there is reason to believe that she will only get better at her job as time passes.
And the better she gets, the better Utah’s chances of finally ending its agonizing national title drought will become.
