When K.J. Kindler was hired as Oklahoma’s coach in 2006, it was overwhelming at first.
Then-OU head coach Steve Nunno retired from the Sooners to spend more time with his family, leaving a roster of gymnasts to adapt to a new coach.
Kindler was pregnant, in the process of living in a completely new part of the country after leaving Iowa State, her alma mater, and was tasked with putting the pieces of a broken team back together.
Once Kindler and then-assistant coach Lou Ball settled in Norman, she began to make changes to the program, adding Kentucky assistant coach Tom Haley to her staff and forming personal relationships with each of her gymnasts.
Kindler’s first season at OU ended with 12 consecutive wins. The next year, OU won the Big 12 Championship and finished the regular season as the only undefeated team in the nation. In the coming years, victories and All-American honors flooded in, and in 2010, the Sooners made their first NCAA team finals appearance in program history and finished as national runner-ups.
In less than five seasons at the helm, Kindler had flipped around the culture of Oklahoma gymnastics, and the nation was dazzled to watch an up-and-coming program.
Kindler has since led OU to its first national championship in 2014 and did it again in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022. The three-time National Coach of the Year has produced seven individual national champions and has led 13 Oklahoma teams to Big 12 Championships.
“She obviously loves it and is beyond successful,” Amy Pyle, Iowa State’s head coach when Kindler was an assistant, told the OU Daily. “She will go on to be a part of the history book in NCAA gymnastics forever."
For every week of the 2023 collegiate gymnastics season, Kindler’s team has held the top-ranked spot. Whether on any of the four events or as a cumulative team total, the Sooners have been dominant in every meet this year, going into Saturday’s NCAA Gymnastics Championships with just one loss compared to 23 wins.
Now, she’s vying for her sixth title, which would tie her with Alabama’s Sarah Patterson for fourth-most ever.
Kindler knows what it takes to win a national championship and is not planning on letting go of her dynasty anytime soon.
Pyle recalls Kindler going to athletic director Joe Castiglione early on and sharing her ambitious, yet attainable vision for the program. She knew although it would take a while for her plans to take effect, Oklahoma had the ability, resources and administration support to make her vision of winning a national championship a reality.
“She didn't just want to make nationals,” Pyle said. “Her goal, no matter where she was, was to win. And, you know, there's a lot of tools that you need to be able to do that, so yeah, the athletic department has supported her 100% and made it a little easier to reach her goal.”
In October of Kindler’s first season in Norman, Pyle took a trip to check on Kindler’s progress as a Sooner and was impressed with the support from the administration, along with the resources Oklahoma had for its gymnasts compared to Iowa State’s.
“I said to her after being there, ‘You obviously made the right decision,’” Pyle said. “‘This is going to be fantastic for you.’”
Head coach K.J. Kindler and freshman Faith Torrez during the NCAA Region Final meet on April 1.
‘Thrown into the fire’
Kindler began her journey in collegiate gymnastics at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, before transferring to Iowa State as a walk-on under Pyle in the early 1990s and becoming an assistant coach at the program upon graduation.
Kindler also coached at Cardinal Gymnastics, a club gym Pyle owned in Ames. Pyle says her work ethic and attitude as a gymnast had the makings of a potential head coach, especially when learning how to navigate the small budget and resources Iowa State gave its gymnastics program back then.
“You had to go the extra mile,” Pyle said. “Extra mile all the time to try to catch up, let alone stay even with the other schools, and she was always, always willing to do that.”
Pyle said Kindler coached simultaneously at Iowa State and Cardinal, which involved many late nights and swift turn-around periods between the two teams she coached. On many occasions, Kindler would wrap up a night of collegiate coaching with the Cyclones on Friday and drive to a club meet to coach her Cardinal team the next morning on Saturday, once driving five and a half hours to Chicago.
Kindler was all in.
“At Iowa State, I was really kind of thrown into the fire and I had to do a lot of learning on my own,” Kindler said. “I had an incredible boss, Amy Pyle. What she was really great at was not micromanaging me. I made a lot of mistakes and she would let me know when I was making those mistakes, but she allowed me to make them.”
On top of coaching, Kindler spent extra time outside the gym finding floor music and choreographing Cyclone floor routines, a natural task as she choreographed all her own routines as a gymnast.
Kindler prides herself on the variety of floor routines she is able to produce each year and the way they fit each gymnast’s showmanship abilities.
“Most people aren't blessed with that,” Pyle said. “She was obviously very blessed with having the ability to take anybody whether they were a good dancer, average dancer or not one rhythmic bone in their body and come up with a floor routine that was phenomenal.”
Along the way, Kindler met Lou Ball, a former Michigan and Nebraska gymnast, at a club competition in Omaha, Nebraska. Kindler grew familiar with Ball’s coaching techniques and suggested him when a coaching position at an Iowa State summer camp opened up.
Since Omaha to Ames is a three hour trip, Ball accepted the position and coached over the summer.
Once it concluded, Pyle approached Ball with a collegiate coaching offer to join Kindler at Iowa State as a volunteer assistant coach as the only paid positions were already filled by Pyle and Kindler. Ball accepted the position and began coaching at Iowa State as well as with Kindler at Cardinal.
Ball and Kindler began to mesh. They worked well together at Iowa State and Cardinal and were an unstoppable team. They built efficient training plans, communicated with ease about gymnasts’ progress, managed athlete injuries and more. They would later go on to get married.
Everything was falling into place until Pyle resigned to spend more time with family and recommended Kindler take her place on an interim basis.
“She was just so dedicated to the program and gymnastics as a whole,” Pyle said. “She obviously is a phenomenal coach, has a great vision, and that takes you know, a special coach to be able to pull at the pieces together.”
After the interim period concluded, Kindler became the full-time head coach while Ball became the full-time assistant coach. Ball and Kindler continued to coach at Iowa State and the two became co-owners of Cardinal Gymnastics.
“We built Cardinal up together, we built the Iowa State program together. That was our little baby we kind of built together,” Ball told the Daily. “You could tell she was a great choreographer, she had great creativity, always from the very beginning. I just felt like it was something we could build together, so we were a great team early on.”
In her 2001-06 head coaching run at Iowa State, she coached 13 individual Big 12 champions and won the 2006 Big 12 Championship.
She also led the Cyclones to the NCAA team finals for the first time in school history in 2006.
“For Iowa State to make a Super Six, it's just unheard of,” Pyle said. “They just didn't have the support, so it was just a lot of dedication and hard work and sacrifices on their part to get Iowa State to that level.”
Kindler was making waves, and schools across the nation were noticing. One in particular, was a fellow Big 12 school just coming off its fourth-consecutive Big 12 football title: Oklahoma.
Pyle had kept in touch with Kindler over the years, serving as a mentor, a friend, and as a photographer on the sidelines after she left Iowa State. She also helped Kindler through the interview process, although OU was considered the enemy as a Big 12 rival and Kindler was hesitant to interview.
“Yeah, so we never liked OU,” Pyle laughed. “She didn’t really want to leave Iowa State, but Lou really pushed her. So when K.J. said she was going down to interview, I said ‘Okay, if you go, you're gonna go there.’”
Kindler disagreed and claimed she wouldn’t enjoy visiting campus but Pyle insisted.
“So she gets back and he obviously offered them the job and, you know, she and I were both crying,” Pyle said.
Kindler accepted the position following the 2006 season and packed up to move south to Norman.
After all, by 2010, collegiate women’s gymnastics was an NCAA sport for 28 years, yet only four programs had won a national championship — UCLA, Utah, Georgia and Alabama. It was a constant battle between the SEC and the then-Pac-10, and Kindler was adamant her program had what it took to break the pattern.
Senior Maggie Nichols runs to hug coach K.J Kindler after her beam routine during the Sooners meet against Michigan March 6.
‘She’s the best collegiate coach’
To win the program’s first national championship, Kindler utilized one of her strongest coaching qualities: recruiting.
One of Kindler’s best recruiting steals to date was Maggie Nichols, a 2015 world champion and 2016 Olympic Trials participant.
“When I was touring other colleges and stuff I felt I didn't feel that connection that I did with the coaches at OU and especially KJ,” Nichols told the Daily. “She really reminded me of my coaches back home … Kind of like those mom figures but also someone who's going to grow you into a national champion and an amazing human being. She definitely sealed the deal for me in so many different ways and I look up to her to this day.”
In Nichols’ last year before arriving at OU, she was on the path to the Olympics, most notably winning the bronze in the all-around at the 2015 U.S. Gymnastics National Championships and going on to win gold with the team at the World Championships the same year.
In the spring of 2016, she suffered a meniscus tear which limited her training for the national championships and she was ultimately left off the Olympic team. It was a low point in Nichols’ journey but she knew Oklahoma was finally on the horizon.
Nichols’ first impression of Kindler traces back to an OU gymnastics camp she attended at around 10 years old. Nichols says she could feel the Sooner magic even at a young age and although she later toured other schools, she always felt like OU was her home. Once it came time for recruiting, Nichols says Kindler’s personality sold her.
“She asked me my goals that I have in college and she continued to remind me that she's going to help me achieve those goals,” Nichols said. “Obviously my goal was to become a national champion with my team and she told me she's gonna do everything she can to help us do that. So (she’s) just super personable and inspiring and someone that is going to help you become the best person and athlete that you can be.”
Nichols competed for OU 2017-2020. Besides winning the 2017 and 2019 national team championships with OU, she also won eight individual national championships, the AAI Award (awarded to the top senior gymnast in the country), the Honda Award (awarded to the top collegiate female athlete in each sport,) and finished her career tied for fifth in NCAA history for most perfect 10s scored throughout her career with 22.
After finishing her bachelor’s degree, Nichols returned to OU as a graduate assistant, while pursuing her master’s in intercollegiate athletics administration. In her second year of the master’s program, Oklahoma won the 2022 national championship and Nichols was by Kindler’s side through it all.
“It was an amazing transition,” Nichols said. “We became super close when I was a coach because I was standing right there next to her, so (there were) a lot more conversations and her guiding me in the right direction as a coach. I learned so much from her when I was coaching … So super thankful for being able to have both of those relationships with her.”
Besides recruiting big names like Nichols, finding lesser-known gymnasts and being able to turn them into All-Americans is something Kindler has become nationally known for.
During recruiting season, Kindler and her staff analyze OU’s roster and determine what roles need to be filled or improved. Each piece of the puzzle, as Kindler describes it, must fit a certain personality mold.
Kindler is especially proud of her walk-on student-athletes over the years as Kindler herself was one of them when she competed. Many Sooner walk-ons have gone on to receive scholarships, most recently in 2023 when Bart Connor Gymnastics Academy alums junior Bell Johnson and senior Jenna Dunn were awarded for making lineups and turning in consistent performances.
One former walk-on turned scholarship athlete, Natalie Brown, even filmed a documentary that featured Kindler and former OU football coach Lincoln Riley, both walk-ins in their time as athletes. In her time competing for Kindler, Brown won two national championships with the Sooners and became an All-American.
Sooners gymnasts on Kindler’s 2023 team admire her amiable manner and willingness to adapt to each of her gymnast’s learning styles.
“She just really cares about each individual,” sophomore Danielle Sievers said. “Everyone brings something so special and unique to the team and she really gets to know each athlete. I think her really pouring into each and every one of us helps us build our own confidence, which then will lead to us doing the best we can out on the floor. So I think just her special personality really builds this team up.”
Self-described as creative, positive and detail-oriented, many OU gymnastics fans are familiar with Kindler but not all are familiar with the personality and one-on-one relationships the coach has with all of her gymnasts, whether it be cracking a joke before a beam routine or the slightest correction, which can make all the difference.
“She does an amazing job of just adapting to everybody,” sophomore Jordan Bowers said. “She knows how to cater to each and every single person. Just little cues that can totally switch your mindset or how you're getting the skill around, it blows my mind sometimes. Just that one little thing, just changed the whole thing.”
Kindler credits her ability to teach a skill from the ground up to her work at Cardinal because no matter what level she coached, there was always a skill progression or drill for a gymnast to work on next.
“You had to be able to recognize the talent of somebody that maybe hasn't finished very high at Nationals or maybe didn't even make nationals, but you have to recognize that talent and then draw their ability out of them and make them into phenomenal gymnasts. She did that year after year at Iowa State and continues to do that,” Pyle said.
Since 2007, the combined forces of Kindler, Ball and Haley has been unstoppable as no other coaching staff in college gymnastics has been together longer. While Ashley Kerr was added to the staff as a volunteer assistant coach in the fall of 2017, Nichols said the coaching staff’s collaboration, bond and loyalty to each other was one of, if not the biggest reason she chose OU.
“They're just so personable and family-oriented,” Nichols said. As far as Kindler specifically, “She's super strategic in everything that she does in the gym and outside of the gym. She just knows how to train, I mean she’s the best collegiate coach.”
Kindler believes her coaching style is primarily a mix of her college head coaches, Mary Jane Olson from Hamline University and Pyle from Iowa State. While one was technical and the other was focused on the motivational and emotional side of the sport, both were able to show Kindler what it takes to be a woman leading a collegiate sports team, especially back then.
Historic head coaches like Alabama’s Sarah Patterson who created one of the most successful college gymnastics programs in history and Georgia’s Suzanne Yoculan who led a streak of teams to five national championships in a row inspired Kindler to take a look at their philosophies and strategy, especially since the two had different coaching styles and were female leaders of rival programs.
Kindler says Utah’s Greg Marsden who built his program from the ground up and is the only program to qualify to every gymnastics national championship in NCAA history as well as UCLA’s Valorie Kondos Field who consistently choreographed viral floor routines despite having no gymnastics background also showed Kindler how a passionate coach can push their athletes to achieve whatever they want.
As for Ball and Haley, Kindler says the two “bring something different to the table, that’s why we’re so good together.” Haley is more passionate and knows how to get the team fired up while Ball brings more of a calm demeanor to the gym, but both know how to celebrate their gymnasts when the time is right.
The two associate head coaches bring an interesting approach to training as both alternate coaching bars. When Haley coaches floor in practice, Ball coaches bars and when Ball coaches vault, Haley coaches bars so the gymnasts don’t train more than one leg event each day.
This dual-coach strategy to the event has paid off as out of the four events during the regular season, bars held the highest average and never dipped below 49.400 once all season.
Kindler and Kerr handle beam together as well as choosing what apparel the team wears each week and even designing every leotard the team wears.
“I definitely try to bring the creative element to our team and kind of thinking out of the box, doing different things and keeping the train on track,” Kindler said.
All four coaches foster the philosophy that they want to help form great women by coaching great athletes and it starts with mentality.
“We talk a lot about that you can prepare to fail, or you can prepare to succeed and whether you're in the lineup or you're not in the lineup, you're preparing to succeed,” Ball said. “You know, when somebody comes out, to the next person going in, you're prepared to succeed. And that's always been our message. I think that's one of the secrets of success is just being consistent with your approach.”
Head coach K.J. Kindler during the NCAA Norman Regional Semifinal on March 30.
‘There’s nothing like a coach like K.J. Kindler’
After 17 years of being in Norman, Kindler isn’t overwhelmed anymore. If anything, she’s ready for more.
Entering Saturday’s team final, Kindler knows all eyes are on her and her No. 1 ranked team. Oklahoma is now part of the seven-member list of schools that have won a national championship and as the reigning champ, Kindler’s team is the one everyone wants to chase.
Whether it be through her past at Iowa State, her recruiting strategy, or her coaching staff, everyone will be watching the Sooners pursue their sixth national championship.
“There’s nothing like a coach like K.J. Kindler,” Nichols said.
This story was edited by Colton Sulley.
