2B — January 14, 2019
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
The Michigan women’s gymnastics team hired Rhonda Faehn as a consultant before firing Faehn four days later when U-M regents called for her termination.

Rhonda Faehn’s
TENURE
with Michigan

January
10-13

Thursday, January 10

Friday, January 11

Saturday, January 12

Sunday, January 13

Michigan brings Rhonda 
Faehn onto its gymnastics 
staff, but does not issue an
announcement. 

Faehn is spotted coaching in 
Michigan’s meet in Tuscaloosa, 
Al. The program confirms to 
The Daily that Faehn has been 
hired by the gymnastics team.

The Athletic Department an-
nounces it brought Faehn on 
as a “consultant in a coaching 
capacity.” The team website 
lists her as an assistant coach.

Michigan regents call for termi-
nation of Faehn’c contract. Hours 
later, the Athletic Department an-
nounces an end to its “consulting 
relationship” with Faehn.

I 

had 345 words of an 
empowering column about 
the Michigan women’s 
gymnastics 
team written 
on Saturday 
morning.
It all started 
when my 
roommates 
and I went to 
the Michigan 
Theatre Fri-
day night to 
see “On the 
Basis of Sex.” 
About 20 minutes before the 
movie started, an older-looking 
woman and man walked in, 
with the man wearing a Michi-
gan varsity jacket — so, natu-
rally, I pried.
“Did you play a sport at Mich-
igan?” I asked. 
“About a million years ago,” 
he chuckled. “Men’s gymnas-
tics.”
Turns out his name is Chris-
tian Vanden Broek and he com-
peted from 1965-67 — seasons 
that, he’ll tell you with a smile, 
included exhibition meets with 
international Russian teams 
that packed Crisler Center. I 
told him I’d only covered the 
men’s team once for The Daily 
but wrote about the women’s 
team pretty consistently my 
freshman year. 
He nodded his head. The 
popularity of the women’s team 
wasn’t news to him, and he 
didn’t seem to mind that. 
“Used to be the men would 
fill up Crisler — now they’re 
drawing 200 or 300 people at 
Cliff Keen while the women fill 
up Crisler.”
As I watched Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg give a flooring speech 
to a trio of judges who tried to 
mansplain the three branches 
of government to her, memories 
from The Daily’s Women’s His-
tory Month series from last year 
kept popping up. At that time, so 
many coaches and athletes were 
excited to talk about how far the 
women’s teams at Michigan had 

progressed, with gymnastics 
being one of them. 
I wanted to write a feature on 
that throughout 
the whole series. 
The women’s 
gymnastics team 
is not one of 
the best female 
teams at Michi-
gan — it’s one of 
the best teams at 
Michigan, peri-
od. After talking 
to Vanden Broek, 
I felt like I finally 
had the perfect anecdote to 
write that. 
Then I opened Twitter.
Rhonda Faehn had been hired 
as an assistant coach to replace 
Scott Vetere, who left Michigan 
after having an inappropriate 
relationship with a student-
athlete. As can be expected, 
Faehn’s position with USA Gym-
nastics over the course of the 
last three years 
— particularly 
during the Larry 
Nassar scandal 
— spurred a sig-
nificant amount 
of Twitter replies 
criticizing the 
program for its 
hire after Vetere’s 
departure.
As I switched 
between tabs of 
frustrated comments and my 
345 words of national champi-
onship titles and All-American 
women and Big Ten records, 
it felt like my column about 
women that helped emphasize 
a trend of female success in 
sports didn’t matter anymore. 
Especially after the Univer-
sity’s announcement that the 
athletic department ended its 
contract with Faehn on Sunday 
night, barely four days after 
her hire, all I could think about 
were scandalous situations that 
seemed to mar a history of suc-
cess. 
Right now, the conversa-
tion seems to be based around 

whether hiring Faehn was right 
or wrong — for me, that discus-
sion seems to miss a broader 
point. 
When you 
hear about 
scandals in 
major football 
programs like 
Ohio State or 
Penn State, you 
also hear about 
the years and 
years of storied 
success that 
accompany 
those programs. Even amid a 
domestic violence case he was 
suspended for mishandling, 
announcers praised Buckeyes 
coach Urban Meyer for battling 
through “adversity” throughout 
the scandal. 
That’s because these teams’ 
athletic successes, no matter 
how small or big, can make 
headlines for weeks, or even 
months on end, 
engraving a 
predisposed 
way of thinking 
that involves 
greatness and 
respect. It 
primes a lack of 
accountability, 
using on-field 
success as an 
excuse for off-
field, bureau-
cratic and administrative errors. 
I’m definitely not making 
the argument that the team’s 
hiring of Faehn should be 
excused because of its history 
of success — that’s a part of the 
problem with college athletic 
scandals and schools’ lack of 
accountability. But for women’s 
teams, all you hear are the con-
troversies; an assistant coach 
crosses boundaries and a hire 
was made, and suddenly a group 
of young women are forced to 
rebuild a historic reputation 
they had fight to get noticed for 
in the first place. 
Those controversies stick. 
When you Google “Ohio State 

football,” there isn’t a single 
word about domestic violence 
or Meyer mentioned anywhere 
on the first page of results just a 
few months out of the scandal. 
When you search “Michigan 
State gymnastics,” the entire 
front page, save for roster and 
schedule links, is centered 
around Nassar — completely 
scratching the program entirely.
For Michigan, the past two 
major headlines have been the 
hiring of Faehn and the firing of 
Vetere — both very important 
topics for discussion, but not 
to the point that they need to 
completely dominate the image 
of the program. Accomplish-
ments of these teams are so eas-
ily replaced with scandals, and 
unlike football programs, they 
suffer longer and harder for it.
But the women’s gymnastics 
team has done so much good 
in relation to the reputation of 
women’s sports at Michigan, 
and whether Faehn is on staff 
or not, that shouldn’t be writ-
ten off.
You’ve got coach Bev Plocki 
redeveloping an almost non-
existent team from the ground 
up. You’ve got 14 women 
who somehow manage to flip 
through the air so well that they 
went into this weekend ranked 
sixth in the nation. You’ve got 
an alum of the men’s team who 
has absolutely no problem tell-
ing you that women fill up his 
team’s old stomping ground and 
not sounding even remotely con-
tempt about it, all while waiting 
to watch a movie that chronicles 
a badass woman and her fight 
against laws that discriminate 
on the basis of sex. 
I didn’t want this column to 
be about Faehn, because I want-
ed it to be about a strong team of 
women who are advancing the 
culture of athletics at Michigan. 
If a guy in a movie theater can 
see that clearly, so can we. 

Byler can be reached at 

dbyler@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @laneybyler.

Women’s athletics, and the attention we pay

LANEY
BYLER

I didn’t want 
this column 
to be about 
(Rhonda) Faehn

The women’s 
gymnastics 
team has done 
so much good.

