Arizona gymnastics adds former Nebraska associate head coach Brian Amato to staff

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.