Ellington

Elise Ray almost gave up gymnastics 12 years ago.

The first-year assistant UW gymnastics coach says a trip to the 2000 Sydney Olympics where “pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong” nearly broke her gymnastics spirit and had her seriously considering whether to leave the sport.

But now, after a decorated collegiate career at the University of Michigan and an Olympic medal, the 14-time All-American finds herself right back in the collegiate gymnastics world, where she rediscovered her love for the sport and is now helping others do the same.

“It was just too much”

Twelve years ago, an 18-year-old Ray was getting ready for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But competing on her sport’s biggest stage was anything but a dream come true.

Iconic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi — who has coached some of the sport’s most successful athletes, including the first gymnast ever to score a perfect 10, Romanian Nadia Comaneci — had just taken over USA Gymnastics and brought with him his intense and demanding training regimen. In the all-around finals of those Sydney Games, the vault was mistakenly set too low, which resulted in a multitude of dangerous crashes. And to add even more pressure, the Magnificent Seven brought the United States its first Olympic gold medal in the women’s team competition just four years prior, and the country expected the same from Ray and the rest of her Sydney teammates.

It was a lot to handle for a teenager.

“We just all felt like we had the world sitting on our shoulders, such high expectations, because we were following the [Magnificent Seven] from 1996,” Ray said. “Anything less than gold was unacceptable.”

The pressure, the incorrect vault setting, and the severe training schedule got to Ray and her teammates during competition, and the team didn’t bring home gold.

The United States didn’t even bring home a medal at all.

Ray went on to become the only American woman to qualify for an event final in Sydney when she qualified on beam, but a disappointing fourth-place team finish was a difficult burden to carry.

“We walked away with everybody being so disappointed in us and it was just like a very heavy blanket to wear for a while,” Ray said. “We all just kind of crumbled under [the pressure] and I had never crumbled, ever, up until that point. It was just too much.”

The team would have to wait 10 years for a medal, ultimately receiving the bronze when the International Olympic Committee stripped the Chinese national team of its medal after an investigation proving that the Chinese team had used underage gymnasts.

Right after the Olympics, though, Ray contemplated if she should just give up gymnastics and move on.

But she didn’t — which brought her to Michigan.

“Just what I needed”

Ray tells the story with a smile.

“In my first practice [in college], my first competition, I was so serious because that’s how I had always trained how to be,” Ray said. “[My teammates] all would make fun of me and they would tell me to relax. They never put me on a pedestal because I was an Olympian and I’m not like that anyways; it was just what I needed.”

After Sydney, Ray went to the University of Michigan on a full athletic scholarship and rekindled the love for her sport that wavered after the Olympics.

There, she met current UW head coach Joanne Bowers.

“When I worked with her from her sophomore through senior years at Michigan, she was one of our toughest competitors,” Bowers said of Ray. “She was a great athlete, a good person, and cared a lot.”

To say that Ray was a good athlete would be an understatement.

She would become one the most accomplished gymnasts in Michigan history, with a program-leading 14 All-American honors. In 2005, she led her team to the NCAA Super Six — the collegiate gymnastics equivalent of the Super Bowl — where the Wolverines finished second and Ray took second individually on beam. In 2001, she tied for the all-around title; she took first on beam in 2002 and on bars in 2004. With Ray, the Wolverines also took home four consecutive Big Ten team championships from 2001-2005.

But her biggest accomplishment at Michigan wasn’t what she won; it was what she rediscovered.

“I was sort of reminded of all fun in gymnastics through college, and really found my passion again through college gym,” Ray said. “I learned to have fun and do what I loved, and it just turned everything upside down for me.”

“Everyone knows who Elise Ray was as a gymnast”

Now, instead competing on the floor, Ray is standing on the side, watching, and above all, coaching.

She has been integral to the UW gymnastics team’s stellar beam rotation thus far by working with the team on handling pressure, something she is all too familiar with.

“I’ve been through everything that these girls are going through — and hopefully will go through — firsthand,” Ray said. “I was pretty successful at it, so I have a lot of tools that I’m so anxious to share with them.”

One of the things she’s brought to the team is a variety of pressure drills the Huskies use on beam. One way she teaches the gymnasts to hone their mental game in preparation for the stress-filled meet is to have them do their routine on beam while teammates sit on the surrounding beams, yelling and throwing things as a distraction.

“It’s so up in your face,” UW sophomore Aliza Vaccher said of what she deems her favorite pressure set. “It’s so different [from] what we usually do, and it really helps with the mental toughness part.”

Sounds crazy, but it’s crazy enough to work.

In the first two meets of the season, the Huskies have turned in their highest scores of the competition on beam and posted back-to-back fall-free rotations.

Having a former Olympian as a coach was almost too good to be true for some of the Huskies, who surely were watching Ray when she competed in the 2000 Olympics.

“Everyone knows who Elise Ray was as a gymnast, so it was hard to believe when she became our coach,” Vaccher said. “But now it’s just normal. You definitely respect her, knowing what she accomplished in gymnastics. It’s really easy to trust and know that what she tells you to do is going to work.”

Being back in the college gymnastics world — the same place where she rediscovered her love for the sport — has been fun for Ray, but it hasn’t been without its hardships.

“It’s really challenging, because I want to go out there and compete,” Ray said of coaching. “I’m now realizing that it’s much easier to do it than be behind the scenes preparing the girls, and it makes me miss [competing] terribly because I had such a wonderful experience.”

Reach reporter ThucNhi Nguyen at sports@dailyuw.com or on Twitter @thucnhi21.