Ironically, the first must-have on Utah associate head coach Carly Dockendorf’s checklist of essentials for a Red Rocks beam worker is something she didn’t possess as an athlete herself: a love for the apparatus.
“To be honest, I was terrible at beam as a gymnast,” admitted Dockendorf. “It was my worst event. I probably stayed away from that event as much as I could.”
Yet, in just her three and a half years at the helm of Utah’s beam lineup, she’s begun a dynasty. The Utes haven’t finished the regular season ranked lower than third on the event in her tenure, and last season their beam NQS was the highest in the NCAA on any apparatus—a feat they’re in the process of repeating with their 49.670 leading the nation currently.
Dockendorf, the former Washington gymnast and international pole vaulter for Canada, was essentially a stranger to beam when she took over the event for the Utes after legendary coach Megan Marsden retired following the 2019 season. Titles and perfect 10s on bars and floor highlighted Dockendorf’s gymnastics career, and her pre-Utah coaching career at Seattle Pacific focused primarily on vault and floor. But, an intuitive character evaluation by Farden prompted him to take the gamble assigning her to coach beam, receiving one…
