The Arizona gymnastics program will have a full coaching staff with a coach to take point on each event for the first time in several years. That comes with the hiring of former Nebraska associate head coach Brian Amato as an assistant on John Court’s staff.
Amato has been the primary coach on bars at Nebraska for the past six years. That will also be his role at Arizona.
“Brian is a great
person and championship-level coach,” Court said in the department’s press release. “His uneven bars teams at the Power 4 level have been nationally ranked over the years, and he is a tireless recruiter.”
The hiring of Amato and fellow assistant Julia Ballard Clark are a departure for Court. His previous hires have tended to be young women who have only recently finished their college gymnastics careers. While he went that way by adding former GymCat Emma Strom to the staff, the rest of the group will have years of college coaching experience.
Amato spent the past 13 years coaching college gymnastics. He also coached at the club level for 17 years. He has focused on bars throughout his 30-year coaching career. Ballard Clark will coach balance beam, Strom will oversee floor exercise, and Court will be primary on vault.
Amato was hired at Nebraska in August of 2020, joining the staff of second-year head coach Heather Brink ahead of the 2021 season. During the first two years, Nebraska sent individuals to regionals but the Huskers did not qualify as a team. That changed in his third season and bars was a big part of it.
In 2023, Amato helped the bars lineup reach the 10th-best score (49.500) in school history on two occasions. That effort was led by sophomore Emma Spence, who posted a personal best (9.975) to tie the third-best bars score in program history. She was named WCGA Co-Regional Gymnast of the Year that season.
As a junior, Spence finish third on bars at the 2024 Big Ten Championships. Amato coached her and the rest of the team to a 20th-place finish on the event. The team once again qualified for the postseason as a group and competed in the second round.
Spence won bars at the conference championships as a senior by matching her career high on the event. She was one of six Huskers to hit a personal best on the event in 2025. The group ended up ranked 21st on bars and competed in the second round of regionals for the third straight year.
Bars was the best event for the Huskers, who finished ranked 25th in the country on the apparatus in 2026. It was the worst event for NU the year before Amato arrived. By his third year, it had become its best. It remained that way in three of his final four years with the program (2023-26).
Amato’s time at Nebraska came after a seven-year stint at Oregon State. Although the pandemic cut the season short his final year in Corvallis, Amato had a great deal of success with the Beavers the five years before and was headed towards a solid season in 2020, as well.
In 2019, Amato helped the Beavers finish sixth at the NCAA Championships. Part of that effort was the second team All-American bars performance by Hallie Briscoe. She was the third gymnast Amato coached to earn either regular season or postseason All-American honors at Oregon State.
Before Amato coached Briscoe to All-American status, the efforts were led by Kaytianna McMillan. In 2016, she spearheaded the Beavers’ 10th-place finish on bars and earned first team All-American status for the regular season. In 2017, she earned the Beavers’ first 10.0 on bars in a decade.
Erika Aufiero blossomed under Amato’s tutelage, as well. She earned first team All-American honor in 2015 to become his first athlete to reach that status.
Amato became available after Nebraska parted ways with Brink following the season. While the team advanced to the second round of NCAA regionals for the fourth straight year, it finished 12th out of 12 teams at Big Ten Championships and 34th in NQS.
