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Illini OIympic Connections

Posted by: Jeff Huth

Thursday, August 7, 2008 11:30 AM

I’ve written in The News-Gazette during the past few weeks about Justin Spring and Butch Zunich heading to the Beijing Olympics — Spring as a gymnast and Zunich as a gymnastics judge.
Those aren’t the only Illini ties to USA Gymnastics and the Olympics. While interviewing Ron Brant for the story on Spring, I learned that the U.S. men’s national team coordinator was a member of Yoshi Hayasaki’s team while he attended the UI. Although Brant didn’t letter, he later helped Hayasaki as a coaching assistant for a few years en route to his current duties.
When we contacted Hayasaki after this revelation, the veteran Illini coach also pointed out that Stacy Maloney, who coached U.S. Olympians Paul and Morgan Hamm for most of their careers, also formerly assisted on his UI staff. Maloney was one of the selection committee members for the Olympic team this year.
Zunich, who was an All-American, also once served on the Illini coaching (as Spring currently does) That’s an impressive number of Illini ties to Olympic gymnastics, and they all are branches of the Hayasaki coaching tree. With good reason, Hayasaki is proud of their postIllini accomplishments, as reflected in this portion of an e-mail on the topic: “They all … remain as a vital part of the development and success of the USA Gymnastics today.”
Read more about Hayasaki here.