It was Suzanne Yoculan’s storybook ending-coaching the final meet of her career April 17 when the Gym Dogs won their 10th national championship and fifth in a row.
“I couldn’t have written it any better,” said Yoculan, UGA’s retiring head gymnastics coach.
When she came to UGA 26 years ago, she told her fledgling team, which had never qualified for the national championships, that it was going to win titles. At the time, Utah was the nation’s premiere program, winning national championships every year between 1981 and 1986. Yoculan won her first national championship in 1987 and said it’s come full circle with UGA winning the past five national championships and Utah finishing second or third for the past six years.
Consistently one of the top teams in the nation, the Gym Dogs have placed in the top five in the nation every year since 1986, winning 16 SEC championships and 21 NCAA regional titles.
The gymnastics program’s success was more than Yoculan ever dreamt of. She didn’t set out to be one of the winningest gymnastics coaches in NCAA gymnastics (her record is 836-117-7), she wanted to be a Rockette and dance in New York City. A therapeutic recreation major in college, she took a part-time job at a gymnastics center in college and then caught the “coaching bug.” She went on to own her own gym and then started coaching gymnasts at the national level. A friend sent her résumé in for the UGA position, and Yoculan was surprised with a phone call for an interview.
“I came down for the interview. I loved it. It just felt right,” she said. “I decided in about two minutes that it was right.”
Admittedly, she didn’t know anything about coaching at the collegiate level when she took the job.
“I started coaching not knowing anything about coaching,” she said.
So she read everything she could to try and stay one step ahead of the gymnasts.
At first Yoculan coached the team in the old women’s P.E. building (currently the dance building), where the quarters were cramped and the equipment was shared with the now-disbanded men’s gymnastics team.
She said that it feels like just yesterday she was taking a 14-passenger van to Tuscaloosa, Ala., and driving back through the night because the team couldn’t afford hotel rooms.
Since then, the team has gained support and its budget and salaries also have improved.
To Yoculan, the biggest difference between 1983 and today is perception and how the university community has come to embrace the program. Attendance at Gym Dogs meets has grown from 200 fans at Yoculan’s first meet to currently packing around 10,000 fans into sold-out Stegeman Coliseum.
Yoculan also helped to create endowed scholarships for the gymnasts, and in 2007 the team moved from practicing in the Ramsey Student Center to the team’s very own state-of-the-art practice facility, the Suzanne Yoculan Gymnastics Center in the Coliseum Training Facility.
Among her proudest accomplishments (after filling the coliseum) are never having an athlete transfer to another school and her program’s continued success over three decades.
“I’m coaching young people to be successful,” she said. “If you just coach the technique, you’re never going to win a championship.”
She also is proud that she’s taught her gymnasts how to succeed after sports.
“I hope I’ve taught our athletes that there’s no dream too big and no such thing as failure,” she said.
With all those accomplishments, Yoculan has checked off every item on her coaching “bucket list,” and said it’s time for her to start on a new phase of her life.
She’ll hand the reins over to Jay Clark, her assistant coach for the past 18 years, and cheer on her Gym Dogs from the stands.
She plans to spend more time with her family and do more motivational speaking. She said she also plans never to check e-mail on her BlackBerry again or make the drive back from Tuscaloosa in one night.
