After what has felt like YEARS, the Mizzou Gym media inner circle got a text from award-winning SID Ryan with news that it’s happening.
“Coaching news coming today.”
Music to this starved-for-content writer’s dream, as we’ve reached the part of the offseason where there’s not much going on. Yes, T&F is still going strong in the postseason, and a trio of Tigers are advancing to the NCAA Championships June 10-13 (Dan & Sophie will be covering that), and golfer Addie Dobson is set to compete in the US
Open June 4-7. And then, of course, there’s the never-ending baseball transfer portal carousel that is careening out of control. But where’s the news on the sports I COVER?! This is about me Mizzou Gymnastics, after all.
Anyway, back to the news.
On Wednesday afternoon, Shannon & Co. announced the hiring of former Georgia and Nebraska assistant (and former Ukrainian national team member) Oleksii Koltakov, who earned WCGA Co-Regional Assistant Coach of the Year honors in 2023. With that recent honor, he’s sure to fit right in with the other WCGA coaches of the year on the Tigers’ staff.
Per the MU Tigers release, Shannon said:
“We are excited to welcome Oleksii to Mizzou. He brings a unique combination of technical expertise, SEC experience and an international competitive background that will be a tremendous asset to our program. Oleksii has shown the ability to help student-athletes develop and compete at the highest level, and his passion for coaching fits well with the culture we continue to build here in Columbia.”
According to the UGA Athletics site, Oleksii joined the GymDogs staff in May 2024 after two seasons at Nebraska where he primarily worked as a vault and floor coach. Former Georgia co-head coach Ryan Roberts, now the head coach at Auburn, called Koltakov a “brilliant technician” after working alongside him at Alabama when he was a volunteer assistant in 2021-22. So yeah…. the new guy’s got some SEC experience, which we LOVE to see.
Koltakov’s also done wonders with the teams he’s coached, turning a pretty mediocre Georgia vault rotation prior to his arrival (sorry, it’s true) into a top-five vaulting team in 2026 with seven — 7!!!! — vaulters earning high scores of 9.90 or better and five with NQS scores of 9.875 or higher. For reference, Mizzou had just four rotation members with 9.90 high scores or better, and just two with NQS scores of 9.875 or higher, so this is potentially a really (really, really) great addition to the future of Mizzou vault, especially.
Here’s his intro video from Georgia when he joined the team in September 2024.
Staff Shakeup
What does this mean for the Tigers’ staff, exactly? Koltakov joins a staff of head coach Shannon Welker, who primarily focused on vault and floor, associate head coach Whitney Snowden (bars, leotard guru<— clearly her most important role) and Jackie Terpak (choreographer, floor).
The opening for another staff member came after the team announced on May 3 that beam coach Lacey Rubin would step down after three seasons with the black & gold. In case you missed it, I (tearfully) wrote about what Lacey, the leader of the Bad Ass Beam Queens, meant to the team here, and asked junior Kaia Tanskanen what she was looking for in the next assistant.
“I’m hoping it is someone who really cares about their job and what they do,” she said. “I also hope they really learn about us as humans as well as athletes and I hope we can just build trust and confidence right away!”
We’ll find out the staff’s finalized roles soon enough — Ryan said it’s still to be determined — so for now, we wait. Jackie would still be in charge of choreo, though, so THANK YOU, GYM GODS. I could foresee Jackie moving to beam?!
Like I said in my season wrap up, the future is so very bright.
