michigan through the decades
from team 1 to team 47
Legendary men’s gymnastics coach Newt Loken was the program’s first head coach after the team was given varsity status beginning with the 1975-76 season. At the time, Michigan was competing as a varsity sport under the AIAW and the MAIAW. Though he only coached the women's team for one season, Loken got the program off the ground.
Anne Cornell took the reigns of the program and coached for two years. She went 6-6 in competitions during those years, but did lead the program to its first winning season in 1978, just two years after becoming a varsity sport.
Though he was only at Michigan for one year (1979), Scott Ponto, a former men’s gymnast, led the Wolverines to its most successful season yet — a 20-3 record. The success was largely due to a big upgrade in the schedule, essentially doubling its competitions in one year.
Sheri Hyatt led the Wolverines in the transition from the AIAW to the Big Ten and NCAA. The two organizations officially recognized women’s gymnastics as a sport in 1982, the same year in which Hyatt took Michigan to its first Big Ten Championship and NCAA Championships appearance. She also coached the program’s very first Big Ten individual champion (1982 - Kathy Beckwith, vault).
A Michigan gymnast from 1980, Dana Kempthorn coached the team for five seasons and was Bev Plocki’s predecessor. Though the team struggled to a 42-76 record during her tenure, several of her gymnasts succeeded, including Angela Williams, a Big Ten champion in 1985 and NCAA Regional qualifier in 1988.
Bev Plocki inherited the program in 1990, which had finished no better than fourth at the Big Ten in the seven seasons prior to her arrival. In 1989, the year before Plocki took over, the Wolverines finished last in the Big Ten with a 2-19 overall record and were a winless 0-13 in the Big Ten. She took Michigan from a seven-win team in her first year (1990) to a 20-win team in her third year (1992), while also securing the program's second Big Ten title and second NCAA Championships appearance. She also captured the first of what would be four-straight Big Ten Coach of the Year awards in 1992, while adding the first of four NCAA Regional Coach of the Year trophies to her mantle. Michigan also celebrated its first NCAA All-American when freshman Beth Wymer finished among the nation's best in the uneven bars and in the all-around competition, earning a pair of NCAA All-America (first team) accolades. The Wolverines proceeded to rally off a then-Big Ten record six-straight conference titles over the next six years as Plocki vaulted Michigan to the top of the conference. In just three seasons, Michigan became a perennial contender for the national championship.
A Brief History of our University
Source: University of Michigan Admissions Office
Founded in 1817 as the “Catholepistemiad of Detroit,” the University of Michigan was the first public university in the Northwest Territories. Three Native American tribes, through the Treaty of Fort Meigs, ceded land to U-M that was sold to provide a significant part of Michigan's permanent endowment.
Ann Arbor was a farm town of only 2,000 people when the university was relocated from Detroit in 1837. The town’s founders, John Allen and Elisha Rumsey, chose the name in honor of their wives - Ann Allen and Mary Ann Rumsey - and to recognize the massive oak trees in the area that created a natural arbor. The Ann Arbor Land Company donated the original 40-acre campus to the university.
U-M enrolled its first students in Ann Arbor in 1841. The university had only two professors who taught six freshmen and one sophomore. The five campus buildings consisted of four faculty homes and one classroom/residence hall building. The faculty’s farm animals grazed over the campus, and much of the campus was fenced in to keep the city’s and the university’s animals separated.
By the 1860s, U-M was viewed as a model for younger state and public universities because it was the largest (with 1,205 enrolled students) and most successful. It remained an all-male school until Madelon Stockwell was admitted in the winter of 1870.
Today, U-M is one of the most distinguished public universities and a leader in higher education attracting top students and faculty from all over the world. Its size (more than 40,000 students), academic strength, impressive resources, and quality of its research provides an environment where students not only learn but also grow and challenge themselves by engaging with new people, cultures and ideas.
