The awards keep coming for the athletes and coaches of the Arizona GymCats. On Wednesday, the Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Association announced that Arizona’s staff of Taylor Spears, Kylie Kratchwell, and Shelby Martinez were the Regional Assistant Coaches of the Year for the South Central Region.
The latest awards join the Big 12 honors bestowed on head coach John Court and fifth-year event specialist Elena Deets. Court was named the conference coach of the year and Deets shared the award for the conference event specialists of the year.
The WCGA honor is the fourth such recognition for the Arizona staff in the program’s history. It was the second for Spears, who is in her seventh year with the GymCats.
The staff led Arizona to a very successful inaugural season in the Big 12. The GymCats finished second in the Big 12 according to record at 5-1. Their lone loss came to Utah. They also finished second at the Big 12 Championships, again trailing only Utah.
More success awaited in the NCAA postseason. Arizona advanced to the regional final for the first time since the new postseason format was adopted in 2019. They overcame No. 10 Georgia to take second in their session of the semifinals, qualifying them as one of the final 16 NCAA gymnastics teams standing.
The GymCats entered the postseason ranked No. 21 in NQS. They ended their run ranked 16th after being picked to finish 31st in the WCGA preseason poll.
Spears came to Arizona in 2019 and was promoted to associate head coach in 2022. As an athlete, she was a national champion on balance beam while at Oklahoma. She leads the charge on balance beam, which has become the GymCats’ strongest event in recent years.
The team was ranked 20th on beam this season, its highet-ranked event. The GymCats had a season high of 49.300 on the event.
Kratchwell joined the staff in 2023 and leads the training on uneven bars, which featured Arizona’s second-highest ranking at No. 23. That was an improvement of nine spots over the team’s finish last year.
The team earned a season high of 49.425 on bars this year. That tied for the second-highest score on bars in program history. Arizona had not scored that high on the event since Mar. 12, 2004.
Martinez joined the staff this season. The Arizona alumna was a standout on vault during her competitive career under the name of Shelby Edwards. She finished as the Pac-12 co-champion on the event in 2014. She helped the team finish 26th this year despite losing its top vaulter after last season and not featuring any vaults with 10.0 start values.
Lead photo courtesy of Arizona Athletics