Gymnastics National Champions Receive Rings
Members of Jefferson State’s 1977 and 1978 national champion gymnastics teams recently received rings commemorating their accomplishments.
The rings follow a celebration in September 2025, where team members from the 1970s and 1980s reunited to commemorate the historic national championships.
Coach Tom Henderson, who started the Jeff State gymnastics program and coached, welcomed the former gymnasts back to the college. He led them on a tour of their former competition gymnasium before they shared memories and enjoyed dinner.
Henderson recalled how the program was built from him casually teaching gymnastics at the college to a program that competed at the highest level.
“We finally got to where we were going and competing against Alabama and Memphis and Jacksonville State and Auburn and all those schools. Just to compete with somebody on that level was something. And we just kept competing, and it kept growing. We had kids come in from New York and Connecticut and Virginia and Florida–places that we didn’t go to. Recruiting was just word of mouth. It was just something that you can’t stop it once it gets going. We just had girls keep coming, and it grew bigger and bigger.”
Bob Moore, who was an assistant coach at JSCC and later went on to a decorated 20-plus-year career at three Southeastern Conference programs, described the feeling of winning the national championship.
“It’s beyond words. When the thing that you’ve trained, pushed, prayed, hoped for finally is laying right there in front of you. It was incredible,” Moore said.
