Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
Last summer, Team USA’s men’s gymnastics ended a sixteen-year drought, capturing a bronze team medal at the Paris Olympics.
The five Olympians included two from the U-M: Frederick Richard and Paul Juda. They stood beaming next to their teammates, including spectacled pommel horse sensation Stephen Nedoroscik, as the medals were draped around their necks.
Watching from the sidelines was Yuan Xiao, head coach of Michigan’s men’s team, who accompanied his athletes to the games. “If your athletes go to Paris, you get to go to Paris,” he says.
Xiao (pronounced “Zhow”) has earned a reputation for turning out top competitors. “He has unbelievable respect in the gymnastics world,” says Justin Spring, an NBC gymnastics commentator and Olympic bronze medalist who now coaches at the University of Alabama.
Spring adds, “It’s amazing to have two Olympic athletes. Their program is very strong right now.”
Juda, who spent the fall touring the country with Simone Biles’s Gold Over America tour and will be back in Ann Arbor for the new season, says Xiao is more than a coach. “He’s a mentor, a father, a friend, a guiding force, all those wonderful terms,” he says.
Xiao, sixty-one, is starting his fourth season as head coach and his twentieth overall at Michigan. He came to Ann Arbor in 2005 as an assistant coach and succeeded Kurt Golder in 2022 to become only the fifth coach in the program’s sixty-three-year history. He’s coming off a year that produced not only Olympic medalists but Big Ten and NCAA titles.
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A native of Beijing, Xiao looks as lithe as the athletes he coaches. He began practicing at age ten and competed until age twenty-four, when sports officials told him he didn’t have the skills to become a top gymnast and suggested he switch to coaching. He took a position with the Chinese national team in 1994, helping develop the country’s leading athletes, but had his sights set across the Pacific.
After meeting American coaches through international tournaments, Xiao accepted a position at the Houston Gymnastics Academy in 1999. He subsequently took a job at the University of Oklahoma, helping lead the program to three national titles between 2001 and 2005, when he joined the Michigan staff.
Xiao says his coaching philosophy is based on two approaches: first, an attention to detail. In the highly competitive gymnastics world, even a tiny mistake can knock an athlete out of contention. Each day, he says, is an opportunity for athletes to improve on their performances.
He also wants team members to strive for greatness. “My standard is, ‘I am the best in the world,’” Xiao says. “They’ve got a vision. They’ve got a passion.”
He points to banners around the gym that list team members’ accomplishments, from Big Ten and NCAA titles to national, world, and Olympic medals. His athletes should feel, “I want to see my name there,” Xiao says.
Like the men’s locker room at the Big House, where inspirational mottos such as “Those Who Stay Will Be Champions” and “The Team. The Team. The Team.” are painted on the walls, the men’s gymnastics practice building is dotted with quotes, too.
“Blame Nothing. Blame No One. Be Prepared to Handle Everything,” is over a door. Masking tape on the floor reads, “NCAA Championships 4/18–4/19 2025,” when they’ll be held at Crisler Center. “We Must Defend Our House!”
That’s where any resemblance between the two sports stops. Thanks to a $7 million renovation in 2022, football players enjoy big-screen TVs, a bowling alley, a barber shop, a pool table, and comfortable chairs at each locker.
The gymnasts practice in a converted ice arena stuffed wall-to-wall with thick blue mats and the apparatuses on which the athletes perform, like pommel horses, parallel bars, and rings. The twenty-four team members share a tiny locker room with benches.
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But at least Michigan still has a program, points out Spring, the NBC commentator. Many NCAA schools have eliminated their gymnastics teams or reduced money available for scholarships. Only a dozen NCAA Division 1 men’s teams have survived, often overshadowed by women’s teams.
Xiao says he’s grateful for the support he’s received from Michigan Athletics, and insists that his athletes keep things in their practice building neat. “If you can’t clean the gym, you can’t clean your score,” he says.
But Xiao’s more than tough love. “He knows when to push you and when to back off,” Juda says. In Paris, he found Xiao’s presence calming amid the glaring global attention. “I knew he was watching over us, and that gave us that one little extra percent,” Juda says. Yet Xiao, he says, also knows how to “goof around” with his athletes.
The coach goofs around with his family, too. Xiao and his wife Julia, a former member of Cirque du Soleil, have two daughters: Pearl, who was a member of the Michigan Marching Band before receiving a degree in public health, and Sophia, a high school senior.
He sat through the movie Barbie with them—“I could see the people dressed up,” he says—and nabbed tickets for his daughters and their friends to see Taylor Swift when the Eras Tour came to Detroit.
For family celebrations, the Xiao family dines out at Evergreen on Plymouth Rd. or Hot Pot Chen on Stadium, where he requests a special menu with traditional Chinese dishes. “You really have to know how to order,” he smiles.
On the drive in from his home in Saline, Xiao often stops at Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea in the 777 Building on Eisenhower, or at York on Packard, where he buys the first of his day’s extra-large cups of tea. He likes both green and black teas and often brews varieties family members send him from China.
Soon, his focus will be completely on the Wolverines’ 2025 season. After an intrasquad meet on Dec. 7, Michigan kicks off competition on Jan. 11. In April, Michigan hosts the conference and national championships.
Xiao says he’d like to stay on at least through 2028, when the next Olympics team will compete. The bronze medals for Juda and Richard are motivation for his newest Wolverines.
“You want to be the next Paul or Fred?” he says to the newcomers. “Challenge yourself every day. Go outside the box. I encourage them and make them think bigger.”
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This article has been edited since it was published in the November 2024 Ann Arbor Observer. 2025 will be Xiao’s fourth, not third, season as head coach.
