Completed Event: Gymnastics versus NCAA Championship Final on April 19, 2025 , , 4th of 4 (197.2375)
Final Score
Gymnastics
4th of 4 (197.2375)
vs NCAA Championship Final
Inside Look at the New Team at the Top
9/16/2015 12:00 AM | Gymnastics
Sept. 16, 2015
Editor's note: UtahUtes.com sat down with gymnastics co-head coaches Megan Marsden and Tom Farden to learn more about the newest member of Utah's gymnastics head coaching tandem. Before his promotion to co-head coach last April, Farden spent five years as a Ute assistant from 2011-15. The season prior to moving to Salt Lake City, he was an assistant at Arkansas. Farden went to Arkansas after six years as the head coach at Southeast Missouri State, where he spent 11 years overall, including five as an assistant coach. He is a Minnesota native and is married (Christina) with a son (Ki).
UtahUtes.com: Megan, how has the transition been to a new coaching partner after working alongside your husband Greg for so many years?
Marsden: It has been a very smooth transition. Since I am quite a bit younger than Greg, we always knew the day would come when he would retire and someone new would join me at the helm of the Utah gymnastics program. In Tom, we found someone we knew I would work well with and who has the same belief system and love for this program that Greg and I have. Tom and I began preparing for this transition a year ago when Greg informed us of his intent to retire and we feel like we make a great team. We have defined the roles that we think put us in the best position to keep Utah gymnastics among the elite programs in the country.
UtahUtes.com: Can you go into a little more depth in regard to your roles?
Marsden: Tom remains our lead recruiter, which he has been for several years. Of course, assistant coach Meredith (Paulicivic) and I are very involved in recruiting as well, but Tom manages our overall recruiting effort. He and Meredith spend a lot of time nurturing the recruits, while I am the advocate for our current gymnasts and the ‘future Utes' who have verbally committed or signed with us. As far as coaching duties, Tom has bars and vault, I coach the beam and Meredith is the floor coach. Tom and I feel very fortunate to have Meredith on our staff, as she is a superb choreographer and coach. She is also a former Ute gymnast, so she has a true love for our program.
UtahUtes.com: Utah has had a lot of great assistant coaches over the years. What about Tom caught your attention as a potential successor for Greg upon his retirement?
Marsden: We have been fortunate to have had some outstanding assistants who stayed with us for a period of several years and with whom we are still very close. Two of them left for head coaching positions (Auburn's Jeff Graba and former Minnesota coach Jim Stephenson). The thing that made Tom stand out was his experience as a head coach."
UtahUtes.com: We're going to talk to Tom in just a minute here, but what are some aspects of Tom people may not know?
Marsden: Tom is high energy, enthusiastic and driven to succeed. He is very demanding of himself and his high expectations carry over to our gymnasts, staff and others involved in the program. The side people who don't know him well don't see is his sense of humor. He is very funny and has a great rapport with our gymnasts.
UtahUtes.com: We'll move on to Tom now. Tom, before we talk about coaching, tell us a little about your childhood so we get a sense of who you are.
Farden: As an infant, I was left in a basket on a sidewalk outside the city hall in Inchon City, South Korea. I was taken to an orphanage, which is where I was living when my adoptive parents (Gordon and Marilyn Farden) picked me out of a catalog. I grew up in a family of seven on a small hobby farm in Dayton, Minn. I wouldn't trade my childhood or my family for any amount of money. My mom quickly identified that I had a lot of energy and got me into gymnastics at age six. I wore brown corduroys and a Bert and Ernie t-shirt to my first practice.
UtahUtes.com: Fill us in on your early days in gymnastics as an athlete and a coach.
Farden: I never was a good gymnast, but I loved the thrill of gymnastics. I competed in gymnastics for 12 years, from age 6 to18, and I developed an unparalleled compassion for the sport. Immediately after I graduated from high school in 1992, I started a club in Anoka, Minn., with my friends Bart Roskoski and Bill Corcoran. We purchased Spectrum Gymnastics with funding from our parents. I paid back every dime, even though it took until 2002, six years after we closed the club. I'm not sure we were good coaches and I know we weren't good business people. The sting of failure from that 1992-96 escapade fuels me to this day to never feel that way again. After closing the club, I went to TAGS in Minneapolis as a team coach from 1996-1998.
UtahUtes.com: How did you get your first shot at college coaching?
Farden: SEMO's head coach at the time, Patty Stotzheim, called me when I was working at TAGS to see if I was interested in becoming her assistant. She was from St. Paul, so we drove together from St. Paul to Cape Girardeau, Mo, for my interview. She offered me the job for a salary of $15,000. By 2003, Patty had moved on to law school and I was promoted to head coach. By that time, I was prepared to be a head coach at a small school. We only had 7.5 scholarships and a total operations budget of $39,000. We made regionals in 2006 and 2008, and in 2008, we placed fifth at regionals, beating Arizona State.
UtahUtes.com: What was behind your decision to leave a head coaching position to become an assistant?
Farden: I really enjoyed my six years as the head coach at Southeast Missouri State and we had a lot of success. However, there was a ceiling on what I could accomplish at SEMO and my goal was to become a head coach at a program that had the resources to attract the type of talent necessary to compete at the highest level. To achieve my goal, I recognized I would need to work my way up as an assistant coach at a top gymnastics school, which is why I accepted a position first at Arkansas and then here at Utah. When Greg Marsden called me after my first year at Arkansas, I thought, ‘legendary program, legendary coach.' It was a no-brainer for me to accept the job.
UtahUtes.com: When did you first become aware of Utah gymnastics?
Farden: I was a club coach in Minnesota when the NCAA Championships were held in Minneapolis in 1992. Every single one of our athletes wanted to become a Utah gymnast after seeing that meet. They all tease me because I'm the only one who made it here!
UtahUtes.com: What did you gain in your five years as an assistant at Utah?
Farden: It's crazy how much I've learned here. I've learned how to handle the highest level of athletes, how to macro-cycle and peak a team of this caliber and how to market our sport. From Megan, I learned how to refine my soft skills. No one is better with the recruits' parents than Megan. From Greg, I learned the more technical aspects of planning and preparation.
UtahUtes.com: What are your thoughts about your appointment as co-head coach?
Farden: It is a dream come true. This job has everything I want in terms of the school, athletic department, gymnastics program and setting. We have everything we need here to succeed, including an unrivaled tradition and atmosphere. Also, I fell in love with the mountains as a child when my parents took me camping out West and I have always dreamed of living in a place as beautiful as Salt Lake City. I love to fly fish, mountain bike, run, ski, hike and camp. My wife and son are also very active, so this is a perfect location for our family.
UtahUtes.com: What are some additional duties that came with your promotion?
Farden: I was quickly reminded of how many balls are in the air at all times when you are a head coach. Every day, I have to focus on every aspect of the program. Before, I could come in and spend 2-3 hours watching recruiting video. I still watch video every day, but I'm also working on planning, marketing, scheduling, coaching, academics, etc. I also quickly learned that watching Greg Marsden for five years and sitting in his chair for five months is not the same. Walking in his shoes is way different than looking at his shoes.
UtahUtes.com: What are the best things about the Utah job?
Farden: First and foremost, the amazing fan support. It is just incredible the way the community embraces our program and the passion and excitement our fans have for Utah gymnastics. The support we receive from (Athletics Director) Dr. Chris Hill and the rest of the administration is unrivaled in college gymnastics. Also, we have world-class facilities in the Dumke Gymnastics Center, the Sorensen High Performance Center, the Burbidge Academics Center and the Huntsman Center arena.
UtahUtes.com: We heard from Megan, but what are your thoughts on how you two are meshing as co-head coaches?
IFarden: We truly enjoy working together and we are excited about the challenges and successes that lie ahead for Utah gymnastics. As good a coach as Megan has been over the years, I feel as though she has become empowered and revitalized with the change. It is her first time working outside the shadow of Greg—Megan's mentor for her entire career—both as a college gymnast and a coach. Coaching alongside me naturally creates a different coaching dynamic, and she and I are very comfortable taking the lead, depending on the situation.
UtahUtes.com: What changes are you and Megan implementing?
Farden: We've won back-to-back Pac-12 Championships and we finished second in the nation last year, so a big part of our philosophy is ‘if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' With (assistant coach) Meredith (Paulicivic) on board, we now have an in-house choreographer for both balance beam and floor, which is a huge change. We've also made a few tweaks to our preseason routine in areas ranging from our team retreat to conditioning. But in terms of the training schedule and practice implementation, everything is basically the same as what we've always done.
UtahUtes.com: You have a lot of new faces on this year's team. What can we expect?
Farden: We graduated one of the best senior classes in school history and I expect our returners to compete for the 13 routines we lost and for some of them to emerge as the new stars. This freshman class brings a good blend of power, grace and clean execution. The unknown is their consistency in the college setting. Our goals are the same as they always are at Utah: be nationally competitive and be on the competitive floor on the last day of the NCAA Championships competing for a national title.
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