Vaulting Forward

New UW Gymnastics Head Coach Jen Llewellyn comes back home to Seattle after a D-II rocket ship ride at the helm at Lindenwood (Mo.)

MARK MOSCHETTI • CONTRIBUTING WRITER

As a young gymnast growing up in the Seattle suburb of Kenmore, Jen Llewellyn often would come across to Montlake to watchwhenever the University of Washington had a home meet.

As a national-caliber collegiate performer for Oregon State, she would compete against the Huskies numerous times during her career. Even while serving as an undergraduate student assistant coach at OSU, Llewellyn and the Beavers had the UW on the schedule.

But for all of those encounters Llewellyn had with the Huskies, the idea of coaching them someday was nowhere on her calendar. Until that calendar turned to last May 24 when she was named as the eighth head coach in the school’s 40-year gymnastics history. “It’s amazing. It’s very surreal,” the 32-year-old Llewellyn said of leading the program she once watched as a child. “It’s super humbling and really special to be back home, and just feel all the emotions. It definitely was a job that I 100 percent couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go for it.”

Given her remarkably successful nine seasons at NCAA Division II Lindenwood in St. Charles, Mo., with six Midwest Independent Conference championships, three USA Gymnastics Collegiate national championships, and 64 All-American athletes, the Huskies decided they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go for Llewellyn, either,

“It was evident that she has a passion, commitment, and vision for developing young women, both in and out of competition, and the tremendous success she has experienced exemplifies this on every level,” UW Athletic Director Jen Cohen said in a statement on the day Llewellyn was hired. “Those qualities, coupled with her local ties to Seattle and her experience as a studentathlete in the (Pac-12) make her an unbelievable fit for our department.”

Business — or Coaching?

So many coaches feel a calling to that pursuit after their competition days end. However, that wasn’t Jen Llewellyn.

Known then as Jen Kessler, she was a threetime All-American at Oregon State from 2008-11, capping her career with a second-place finish on the uneven parallel bars at NCAA nationals as a senior in 2011. Back in Corvallis the following school year to finish her degree in merchandising management, she was trying to fill her now-open afternoons.

“So I went to the gym because that was my passion,” Llewellyn said. “I started helping out wherever I could, moving mats or just observing. I really got to see the other side of what college gymnastics was about and see what coaches do behind the scenes and what went into it. I didn’t see myself as a coach until I took that fifth year. I always thought I wanted to be in the business world and follow after my mom.”

Business — specifically, her dream of working in merchandising with a major athletic apparel company — would have to wait. The coaching bug had bitten.

It was evident that she has a passion, commitment, and vision for developing young women...

Thrust Into Lead Role

Halfway across the country in Missouri, Lindenwood was getting its gymnastics program started. In the summer of 2012, Llewellyn joined the staff as a graduate assistant while pursuing a master’s degree in communications.

In November of that year, the assistant coach left for family reasons. Then, after the inaugural meet on the first weekend of January 2013, the Lions’ head coach stepped down.

Just like that, Llewellyn was in charge. “It was me — a 23-year-old — and 11 women, all freshmen,” she said. (A local club coach later came aboard to help with spotting and safety.) “I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the group we had, I fell in love with what I thought was possible with the resources and the location and the community. … People believed in me and believed in us, and it was fun to see what we were able to do there.”

What they were able to do in the weeks that followed was take fifth place at the conference meet and bring home a national balance beam champion from the USAG Collegiate nationals. “I had a chance to figure out who I wanted to be as a coach and what impact I could leave for a studentathlete,” she said. “It was trial-and-error, every single meet, every single day. I really learned that if I do want to be in (coaching), who do I want to be? How do I want to treat young women and impact young women and help them figure out who they are as people and who they are as their best selves as an athlete?”

Relationships And Routines

At Washington, Llewellyn takes on a program that is beginning its fifth decade of existence, and returns 10 athletes from last year’s team. Among them are 2021 NCAA Regional all-around qualifier Skylar Killough-Wilhelm, vault / floor exercise qualifier Amara Cunningham, and vault / bars qualifier Geneva Thompson.

After opening their schedule with a score of 194.000 at Oregon State on Jan. 15 — inside Llewellyn’s college home of Gill Coliseum — the Huskies added more than a full point just one week later, tallying 195.400 in their home opener against California. “Overall, I think it was a great start,“ Llewellyn said during the week between those two meets. “It was really nice to get a true baseline of where we’re at as a team and how this team competes. “There were so many highs we saw with first-time competitors and people hitting routines for the first time in college in that arena and that atmosphere,” she added. “We left a lot on the competition floor, which is good this early in the season. It allows us a lot of room for growth.”

Llewellyn, one of whose assistants is husband Cody Llewellyn, whom she met while at Lindenwood, emphasized that this season will be as much about relationships as it is about routines. “It takes time to get to know someone and truly trust someone, so we’re really being methodical and taking or time in building those relationships so they can see who we are as people in the gym and out of the gym,” she said.

Whether it’s regional veterans or freshman going through all of this for the first time, those athletes are the reason Llewellyn is still thrilled to do this every day — even more so now that she’s doing it at Washington. “My favorite part of coaching is being able to see an athlete come in freshman year and seem them grow through their senior or fifth year, watch them develop, watch them find their niche,” she said. “I also love watching them find their passions outside of the gym, watching them go on to bigger and better things once the graduate.

“There are days that are frustrating, when it feels like nothing is working,” Llewellyn added. “Then there are those a-ha moments when they get it. “When you have those moments, it’s a reminder of why I do what I do.”

“My favorite part of coaching is being able to see an athlete come in freshman year and see them grow through their senior or fifth year, watch them develop, watch them find theirniche,”

The File • Jen Llewellyn

• HOMETOWN: Kenmore, Wash.

• HIGH SCHOOL: Inglemoor

• COLLEGE: Oregon State

• AGE: 32

• PREVIOUS COACHING JOBS: Oregon State, 2012 (undergrad student assistant), Lindenwood, 2013-21 (head coach)

• Two-time NCAA Division II Regional Coach of the Year (2019, 2021)

• Three-time Midwest Independent Conference Coach of the Year (2015, 2016, 2018)

• 64 Women’s Gymnastics Coaches Association All-Americans

• 78 All-Conference honorees

• 3 Conference Gymnast of the Year honorees

• 2 Academic All-Americans

• 6 Midwest Independent Conference championships

• 3 USA Gymnastics Collegiate national championships