Team captains named for 2015-16 season

BYU gymnastics head coach Guard Young announced the team captains for the 2015-16 season in Makenzie Johnson Halliday and Éliane Kulczyk.

BYU has not had team captains in the past few years, but with Young in charge he is here to bring back a few traditions.

“This is something I’m used to from my experience at Oklahoma,” Young said. “We’ve always had a dual captainship so they could support and feed off each other.”

The coaches chose one captain and let the team vote for the other. Young and his staff asked Kulczyk to be the first team captain. Kulczyk is a redshirt junior and will compete this year for the first time on all-around. She led the Cougars last year on bars with a 9.850.  

“We chose Éliane because of the leadership we saw from her over the course of the summer,” Young said. “She was one who really kept the team together during that time.”

Kulczyk comes to Provo from Montreal. On her recruiting trip, she felt welcomed by the team and saw that BYU had good values and academics. When Kulczyk arrived in 2012, she spoke very little English, but that was not a problem to the girls on the team.

“I feel like everyone here was willing to help me with my English,” Kulczyk said. “I knew a little bit, but my first five months I was kind of clueless. The girls helped me a lot. It was an adjustment for sure.”

This didn’t slow down Kulczyk in the slightest. The new coaches noticed Kulczyk’s leadership from the beginning.

“It was an honor because having new coaches coming in, they don’t know you that much and they haven’t seen you grow,” Kulczyk said. “It was a lot of change at first, but it was great to know they trusted me with this.”

The team voted Halliday as the second captain. Halliday is a senior and competes on all-around as well. She leads the team on floor (9.825 average), vault (9.842) and all-around (39.140).

“We had the team vote and they voted Makenzie Halliday, which I thought was speaking volumes of her leadership amongst their group,” Young said.

Kulczyk full-heartedly agrees with the team’s choice for her co-captain.

“Kenzie has been a leader since she was a freshman,” Kulczyk said. “The team knows that every time she needs to step up, she will and that’s something you want in a leader. She’s funny, she goofs around with girls and is fun to train with, which is why the girls voted for her.”

Halliday comes to BYU from Allen, Texas. Her parents both competed at BYU as athletes on the swim and softball teams. This summer Halliday married Jon Halliday, a University of Utah football player, but that didn’t keep the team from seeing her true-blue spirit and love for BYU gymnastics.

“I was so honored,” Halliday said when she found out the team voted for her as its captain. “It felt good to know that the other girls look up to me and look to me as a leader.”

Young made it clear the team needed captains in order to communicate better, be more organized and gain more unity among the team and coaches since the coaching staff was all new.

“Communication is key,” Young said. “When [the team] struggles in the gym I see the captains rally the group. That’s what we need captains to do. We don’t necessarily need them to be the most popular girls on the team. We need someone who can rally the troops and get the most out of them and sometimes, this coming from the peer can mean a lot more than coming from the coach. I’ve seen both of them be able to do that already in our pre-season.”

Halliday and Kulczyk’s main focus as team captains this season will be to communicate between the coaches and the team. Some of their other responsibilities include having team meetings, making goals for the season and choosing leotards for the meets. They believe their roles will be bigger once the season starts, but as for now they are making sure everyone works well together, has good attitudes and understands everything.

The team’s main goal this season is to go to nationals, and both captains are confident in their team’s ability.

“I think we have the potential,” Halliday said. “We have been training hard enough and I think that our hard work will pay off and we will make it.”

“We look way better than we did at the end of the season last year,” Kulczyk added. “Every single person is working so hard, and it’s going to show off.”

While Halliday will graduate this year, Kulczyk still has another year left. Young announced they will keep her as their captain next season and believes she will be even more prepared next year.

“I’m going to learn a lot this year and know how to handle things next year to do a better job,” Kulczyk said. “We have really good girls coming in next year, so I’m excited to look forward to the future and see what the team can achieve this year and next.”

With the season still to come, Halliday is ready to end her career on a high note.

“I want to go out with a bang,” Halliday said. “I want to leave an impression and do our best this year.”

Next Friday, Dec. 11, the Cougars will start their season with the Blue and White intrasquad meet at the Smith Fieldhouse at 6 p.m. MST. The event is free and open to the public.