UCLA gymnastics was in a rebuilding period when Janelle McDonald arrived in Westwood in May 2022.
After finishing the 2021 season ranked No. 12 – its lowest finish in 15 years – the program known for its high-level gymnastics and positive team culture was stunted in a dark period.
McDonald had plans to get the Bruins back on track.
“My number one goal was to ensure that they (student-athletes) have a great experience,” McDonald said. “That’s No. 1, hands down, the most important thing to me.”
Just months before she arrived in Westwood, McDonald was an assistant coach at California. Coaching bars, McDonald said she was happy with where she was at, until an opportunity of a lifetime arose.
While on a recruiting trip, McDonald received a call from her boss saying that UCLA reached out to see if she would be interested in interviewing to become the Bruins’ next head coach.
While McDonald had no plans of leaving Berkeley, she went forward with the opportunity as a way to build her professional development.
“I was really happy with what I was doing, and I was proud of the role I had there,” McDonald said.
With encouragement from Cécile Landi – a 1996 Olympian and coach at World Champions Centre – McDonald made the jump for the position head-on.
“When the position was open, I immediately told her she should go for it,” Landi said. “When they made the offer, she called me and I was like, ‘You’ll have no regret trying. If you realize in a couple of years that head coaching is not for you, then that’s okay.’”
So, with no regrets, McDonald packed her bags and headed to Westwood.
But McDonald’s eventual landing spot at UCLA was the product of a 20-year coaching career.
As a former high school gymnast, she wanted to find a way to spend more time in the gym, so she talked to one of her coaches about helping out at the club.
McDonald began her coaching career in 2003 with a 10-year stint at Desert Lights Gymnastics while also attending Arizona State. There, she coached all levels of gymnastics and directed the TOPs program – a talent search and educational program for young gymnasts.
The accolades started piling in for the budding coach. She was named the USA Gymnastics Arizona Rookie Coach of the Year in 2005 and USAG Arizona Compulsory Coach of the Year in 2006.
Following her college graduation, McDonald moved to Illinois and then to Texas to coach elite gymnastics. WOGA, a gym that produced Olympic champions Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin, became her new home.
“We worked a lot of hours,” McDonald said “We coached a lot of gymnastics. It was a really good experience for me as far as being able to learn what I needed to learn to be the best coach that I could be.”
There, she coached alongside Cécile and Laurent Landi – most recently known for being Simone Biles’ personal coaches since 2017.
The coaching duo guided McDonald as she made the transition from coaching club athletes to elite athletes at WOGA. McDonald said she did not have much coaching experience at the elite level before she got to WOGA, but the Landis guided her through the transition.
“I talked a lot of gymnastics with Laurent over the years, and I loved that he was somebody that I always felt was in my corner and pushed me to believe and trust in myself,” McDonald said
.
After six years, however, McDonald was ready for a change.
She joined California’s coaching staff as an assistant coach and made an immediate impact on their program.
Coaching her specialty, bars, McDonald led the Golden Bears to the top ranking on the event in 2021. On top of helping the program win its first-ever Pac-12 regular season title in 2022, McDonald coached multiple All-Americans and guided Maya Bordas to winning Cal’s first-ever bars national championship in program history.
And in short order, UCLA has undergone a 180 with McDonald at the helm. A top-five finish at the NCAA national championship and two individual NCAA titles are just a fraction of what the Bruins accomplished in year one.
“I tried not to have big expectations,” McDonald said. “I wanted them to be able to finish the year and say two things: one is that I had a really great experience. Two is that I have a team of sisters for life around me.”
When the culture began to fall into place, so did the gymnastics.
“I’ve had a lot of meetings with Janelle about culture, about how we’re going to establish it and fix it,” said sophomore Selena Harris. “We’re all in it together is the main thing.”
Improving the Bruins’ final ranking by seven positions from 2022 to 2023 and qualifying for nationals for the first time since 2019, McDonald’s impact speaks for itself.
Amid her second year in charge of UCLA gymanstics, in the same stadium in which Valorie Kondos Field and John Wooden coached, McDonald said she’s grown.
“I stand taller on my own two feet.”
Comments are closed.