Kyla Ross

Kyla Briana Ross (born October 24, 1996) is a retired American artistic gymnast and current assistant coach for the Arkansas Razorbacks gymnastics team.

She is the first female gymnast to win NCAA, World, and Olympic championship titles.

Ross was born on October 24, 1996, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Kiana and Jason Ross.

Her mother is of Filipino, German, and Puerto Rican descent and her father is of African American and Japanese ancestry.

Her father was a minor league outfielder for six years.

She has two younger siblings, McKenna and Kayne.

Her sister McKenna played for the Hawaii Rainbow Wahine volleyball team.

After Ross and her family moved to California, she met McKayla Maroney at her gym.

The two quickly became best friends; they lived near each other and would carpool together to practices, and they had sleepovers together almost every weekend.

As young gymnasts, they both fantasized about going to the Olympics someday.

She later trained at Richmond Olympiad in Virginia and National Gymnastics Training Center in Aliso Viejo before moving to Gym-Max Gymnastics in Costa Mesa, California in 2005.

Her coach, Jenny Zhang, was skeptical about Ross's future in gymnastics because "she had this square body, no legs, square shoulders."

But, fellow coach Howie Liang replied, "Don't worry about her. She will have long legs."

Ross found early success as a competitive gymnast.

Between 2005 and 2007, she won five state titles and two national titles.

She competed as a level 10 gymnast in 2008.

At that year's state championships, she won titles on uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise, and in the all-around.

She added another title on balance beam and a second-place finish in the all-around at the regional championships.

At the 2008 Junior Olympic national championships, she won the balance beam, floor exercise, and all-around titles and finished second on vault.

Ross qualified as a junior elite gymnast at the Metroplex Challenge in February.

In April, she competed at the American Classic in San Diego, California.

Ross was an elite gymnast from 2009 to 2016.

She was a member of the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team at the 2012 Summer Olympics; dubbed the Fierce Five, the squad won the gold medal in the team competition.

Both would earn spots on the team for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

In an interview, Maroney said, "We've known each other since we were six years old... we will always be best friends."

Ross attended Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo, California.

Even after making the 2012 Olympic team, Ross decided to maintain her amateur eligibility and compete in NCAA gymnastics.

Ross was the 2013 world all-around, uneven bars, and balance beam silver medalist.

At the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, she was a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. team and the all-around bronze medalist.

She committed to UCLA in 2015 and graduated from high school in the same year, but deferred college enrollment to vie for a spot on the 2016 Olympic team.

In February 2016, she retired from elite gymnastics to attend college.

That fall, she enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and joined the university's NCAA gymnastics team.

In early 2016, Ross announced her retirement from Elite gymnastics, and in the fall she began her collegiate career as a Bruin at UCLA.

She pursued a major in molecular, cell and developmental biology, graduating in 2021.

She was named eleven times as an All-American, earning first team regular season honors on bars and beam in 2017, first team honors for the post season on bars, beam, and the all-around, first team regular season honors in 2018 on bars and the all-around and first team honors for the postseason on bars, beam, and the all-around and second team honors on floor exercise.

On August 16, 2018, Ross came forward as a survivor of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse alongside fellow Olympian and UCLA teammate Madison Kocian.

Ross's mother has said that her daughter was always very strong, with a lot of energy: "She was born with muscles. We would go to the park and everybody would say, 'Whose baby is on top of that jungle gym?' And I would say, 'Oh, that's my baby. Don't worry about her, she's fine.'" Her father added, "It would use all my effort to get her to sit in her car seat, and I'm a pretty big guy, a strong guy. When she was born, we were like, 'Oh my goodness, she has triceps, she has quads hanging off her. What the heck's going on?' And she was just super strong. I mean, at an early age, she was able to walk across the monkey bars, just hanging herself."

Ross began gymnastics when she was three years old at Greenville Gymnastics Training Center in Greenville, South Carolina.

On March 16, 2019, she became the 11th NCAA gymnast to achieve a "Gym Slam", having earned a perfect 10 score on all four apparatuses.

One week later, she became the second NCAA gymnast, after Maggie Nichols, to achieve a second Gym Slam.