The offseason is here, with all of Arizona’s sports done for 2024-25 season and the 2025-26 campaigns still a little ways away.
Which makes this a great time to step back and see how all of the Wildcats’ programs are doing and how they’ve handled the move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12
Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at each of the UA’s men’s and women’s athletic programs to see what shape they’re in and what prospects they have for the near future. We’ll break down each team and evaluate how it is performing under its current coaching staff, looking at the state of the program before he/she arrived and comparing it to now while also evaluating how that program fits into its new conference.
Next up: John Court and the Arizona GymCats
How it looked before
Court came to Arizona ahead of the 1999 season as an assistant coach under second-year head coach Bill Ryden.
Court had already been a head coach at Vermont for three years, but the Catamounts discontinued their intercollegiate women’s gymnastics program after the 1998 season, demoting it to club sport status. Prior to that, he was an assistant for two years at Vermont and two years at Brown, where he coached under his mother, Jackie Court.
Arizona was a strong gymnastics program under both Ryden and previous head coach Jim Gault. Both men led the program for over 15 years before retiring.
Gault was conference coach of the year eight times and took the team to eight national championship meets. Two of his gymnasts won national titles, 10 won Pac-10 titles, and 27 were named All-Americans.
Ryden took the team to regionals every year of his tenure and advanced multiple gymnasts to the national championships. The team went to the national championship meet as a group in 2002. It was Arizona’s first appearance since 1996. His teams finished as high as No. 2 in the Pac-10/12, tying the best in program history.
When Ryden retired in 2015, Arizona AD Greg Byrne brought in Stanford alumna Tabitha Yim to lead the program. Court stayed at Arizona as an assistant coach under Yim until she left just two years after taking over the program to head back to her alma mater.
Court took over as interim head coach for the 2017-18 season since Yim left just weeks before the beginning of the school year. The interim tag was removed in March 2018 by former Arizona AD Dave Heeke.
Court and his staff have built the program back from the point where it once had just two gymnasts compete on vault in a meet at Oregon State to one that has sent athletes to the national championships twice in recent years.
Where things stand now
Court and his staff had the best year of his tenure in 2025. Arizona had the Big 12 co-Specialist of the Year, the Big 12 Coach of the Year, and the WCGA Regional Assistant Coaches of the Year for the South Central Region.
The GymCats got there by going 5-1 in Big 12 competition, losing only to Utah. Despite having the second-best record, they were the No. 3 seed at the Big 12 Championships because Denver had a higher NQS. Once again, they defeated Denver and everyone else in the Big 12 except Utah to finish second.
The team went to regionals in Seattle and pulled off the upset to advance to regional finals for the first time since the new format was adopted in 2019. That is the equivalent of reaching the Sweet 16 in college basketball.
Big 12 vs. Pac-12
The Pac-12 was a difficult gymnastics league to compete in. Two of the eight teams (UCLA and Utah) had multiple athletes with international (including Olympic) experience starring for their teams. Oregon State, Stanford, and California got their share of those from the elite ranks, too. That left only Arizona, Arizona State, and Washington regularly competing with entire rosters of former Level 10 gymnasts.
The Big 12 is an entirely different animal. Only Utah regularly brings in the very top-level recruits. Denver is a very good program, too, but it doesn’t have the overwhelming advantage that Utah does.
What that meant for the GymCats is that they were immediately in the thick of things as soon as they moved leagues. The seven-team league presented a much more level playing field for Arizona. That meant the gymnasts got more recognition and the team got more wins. They also got to compete in the second session of their conference championships, which typically means higher scores.
As far as travel, there really wasn’t a huge change for gymnastics. Gymnastics teams compete mostly in quad meets outside the conference season. Those are held in the same places every year.
Once Big 12 competition started, there still wasn’t a huge change. Five of the seven gymnastics teams in the Big 12 are clustered in the states of Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Only Iowa State and West Virginia sponsor the sport in the eastern part of the league’s footprint.
Next year will be an odd season. Oregon State will join Denver as Big 12 affiliates in gymnastics, but the Beavers will only be involved for one season until the new Pac-12 starts competing. That could cause Arizona to take a step back as far as conference wins and awards. There will probably be a battle for the third and fourth spots in the late session of the conference championships with Arizona, Denver, BYU, and Arizona State fighting it out to join Utah and Oregon State.
One big question
Can the program maintain the upward trajectory after the loss of a strong senior class?
Arizona lost three critical athletes after the season when Alysen Fears, Elena Deets, and Emily Mueller exhausted their eligibility. The trio typically competed 10 of the 24 routines at each meet with both Fears and Mueller performing all-around. Deets was the Big 12 co-Specialist of the Year.
The GymCats did return their fourth senior, Elizabeth LaRusso. She had to sit out her true junior season with an injury, so she will have a redshirt senior year. The vault and floor specialist competes two critical events for the team, so her return was a big boost for 2026.
Joining LaRusso in the 2025-26 senior class is Emma Strom, who has career highs of 9.925 on balance beam and floor exercise. She also competes on vault, where her career high is 9.875.
They also return juniors-to-be Abigayle Martin and Sophie Derr. Both have been big contributors in their first two years in the program.
Martin is an all-arounder who has scored a 9.900 or better on everything except vault. Her career high on vault is 9.875. Her career high in all-around is 39.450.
Derr has competed everything except balance beam at Arizona. She has scores of 9.800 or better on floor exercise, vault, and bars. Bars is typically her strongest event.
The GymCats bring in a freshman class of five, four of whom were rated as three-star or above by College Gym News. The group is headlined by four-star recruit Hillary Puleo out of Phoenix. She is joined by another four-star in Delaney Mead, while Lily Tisdale and Ella Bragga were both rated as three-star athletes. The team also added Arkansas transfer Sadie Smith to the sophomore class.
Can this group replace the numbers if Fears, Mueller, and Deets? Can the team maintain its place near the top of the league?