Sam Morreale, NIU women’s gymnastics coach, recently completed his first full season in his new capacity. Prior to this season, Morreale, an NIU graduate and former gymnast himself, served as the program’s assistant coach for nine years.

Morreale discussed with the Northern Star about his experiences as a first-year coach, what he learned about being an assistant for nine seasons and the future of the program.

NS: What was your initial feeling the first time you addressed the team this season as a head coach?

SM: I was thoroughly excited. My feeling was I had a great group of kids who were ready to take a step forward, and that I just needed to give them some definite directions and expectations. I was pretty excited about the team I was going to be taking over.

NS: Being an assistant coach for nine years, what were some of the things you have done differently from the previous coach?

SM: I learned a lot from Mark Sontag. I compliment him for everything I was able to learn from him. With that being said, what I did differently was I was very hands on, taking the leadership role and going with it. I’m not very big on delegating, before I give someone something to do I’m going to do it first. Also the day to day expectations we set on the kids this year. Trying to get better and take the little steps to move forward.

NS: What was your biggest highlight from this season or goals you accomplished?

SM: We definitely wanted to move up in the MAC ranking, which we did. To get the two kids to regionals was a big step, because we wanted to get there as a team or get a few individuals there. To attain the second highest team score was probably our biggest plus this year. Also getting 49.00 twice on floor was a really cool thing. The kicker is we didn’t get the winning record, we fell short in a lot of spots.

NS: How do you feel about the future of your program, and how much fun was this first season?

SM: I feel great about our future, especially with the underclassmen we have. They got experience, and experience in situations they were comfortable in. We set kids up to succeed. Moving forward, we are definitely able to build off of that. I had an enormous amount of fun, that’s part of my style. Each day brought new types of fun, that’s something we’re looking to try include. If you can’t have fun with what you’re doing it makes it that much harder.