The Nebraska Cornhuskers women's gymnastics team competes as part of NCAA Division I, representing the University of NebraskaâÂÂLincoln in the Big Ten Conference. Nebraska has hosted meets at the Bob Devaney Sports Center since 1976.
Since being established in 1975, the program has won twenty-five conference championships and qualified for the NCAA tournament twenty-nine times. Most of the program's success came under head coach Dan Kendig, who led NU for twenty-five years and made twelve Super Six appearances. Michelle Bryant, Heather Brink, and Richelle Simpson combined to win five individual NCAA championships and are among eighty-three Cornhuskers All-Americans. The team has been coached by Heather Brink since Kendig's retirement in 2019.
Nebraska established a women's gymnastics program in 1975 and hired Karen Balke to lead a team of entirely freshmen and sophomores. Judy Schalk took over the following season, leading the Cornhuskers to five conference titles and an AIAW tournament bid in six seasons as head coach. Schalk resigned in 1983 and Nebraska hired Georgia head coach Rick Walton. Walton's program captured four consecutive Big Eight championships from 1987 to 1990, beginning a stretch of fifteen conference titles in twenty-one seasons. Michele Bryant became NU's first NCAA champion with a record-setting vault performance in Corvallis in 1990.
After a pair of disappointing seasons, Walton was pressured to resign by athletic director Bill Byrne and men's coach Francis Allen. On Allen's recommendation, Byrne hired Dan Kendig, a former Schalk assistant who nearly got the job over Walton ten years prior. Nebraska's Big Eight (and later Big 12) dominance continued under Kendig. The Cornhuskers reached the new "Super Six" finals for the first time in 1997, beating top-ranked Utah to claim the final spot. Heather Brink and Richelle Simpson each won two our NCAA championships in the early 2000s; Simpson was the first NU gymnast to become a first-team All-American in all four events in the same year. Kendig and Nebraska made eleven more Super Six appearances during his twenty-five-year tenure as head coach, but never finished higher than fourth nationally.
Kendig abruptly retired months prior to the 2019 season. It was later revealed he had provided over $30,000 in impermissible benefits to a volunteer assistant through a fictitious company. Nebraska self-reported the violation and received Level II sanctions. Longtime assistant Heather Brink was named interim head coach, and later Kendig's permanent replacement.
Nebraska played its first season at the NU Coliseum before moving to the NU Sports Complex (now the Bob Devaney Sports Center) upon its completion in 1976. When Nebraska's basketball programs moved to the newly constructed West Haymarket Arena (known as Pinnacle Bank Arena for sponsorship purposes) in 2013, the Devaney Center underwent a $20-million remodel to reconfigure and shrink its main arena.
Nebraska opened the Francis Allen Training Complex in 2020 to house its men's and women's gymnastics programs; at 46,000 square feet it is among the largest gymnastics practice facilities in the country.
Regular season