Husker Q-n-A with Griffin Kehler

Griffin Kehler is a junior all-around gymnast from Frisco, Texas, and is a team captain for the Nebraska men's gymnastics team. He's been an NCAA team finals competitor on floor, parallel bars and high bar as both a freshman and a sophomore, and earned All-American honors on floor as a freshman. Kehler is coming off a title in the high bar, which he shared with teammate Evan Hymanson with a score of 13.7, in the Huskers' last meet against Illinois. Kehler visited with Brian Rosenthal of Huskers.com about his career and other interests ahead of No. 4 Nebraska's 4 p.m. home meet Saturday with Army.
 
BR: How did you become involved in gymnastics, and at what age?
Griffin: "So I was 4 years old and basically I was just a ball of energy. And so my parents put me in it as a way to get me out of the house for a little bit. I went my first practice, loved it, came home and I started putting the couches together like P bars. I broke those couches and then I would put pillows on the stairs and do forward rolls down them and put a hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs. They started putting me in it every day, just to get me out of the house and get that energy out, and I've been doing it for 17 years now. I stuck with it. Once I started going every day, those holes starting not happening anymore."
 
BR: At what age did you really begin taking gymnastics seriously?
Griffin: "I started competing when I was 5 but I'd say I started taking it serious around going into my eighth grade year. We moved from Virginia to Texas just for gymnastics. Texas has the best gymnastics programs by far in the country. So we moved to Texas and I was at WOGA (World Olympic Gymnastics Academy) from eighth grade until senior year, and that's when I kind of started looking at the bigger picture, where I wanted to go, do college gymnastics at a D-I university."
 
BR: Why did you decide to come to Nebraska?
Griffin: "So I took trips to Minnesota, Penn State, Ohio State, Naval Academy and here, Nebraska, and I came here and honestly, like it's kind of funny, because everyone who ever comes here they knew nothing about Nebraska at first, and they just kind of come here for the trip. But I fell in love with the campus, loved the coaching staff, the team, the resources here that we have, just like Husker Bucks, the tutors, I mean just Memorial Stadium with the facility and rehab and all that. I mean, they crossed everything off on my list I was looking for in a college and went beyond that."
 
BR: Speaking of facilities, have you had a chance to see any of the new gymnastics training facility? What are your thoughts, and how will it help the program?
Griffin: "I have, yeah. Our new gym's coming together. We should be in there I think in the next few weeks, but yeah, it's amazing, the new facility. We're super excited about that. Can't wait to get in there. By far, gymnastics is going to get better. We're training in a safer facility, better equipment, more equipment. We're going to be able to take more turns and we're not going to have to wait. And then for recruiting especially, not that many D-I schools have that many great gyms, so, I mean, you're walking into a $14 million facility for gymnastics. It's going to be a huge recruiting tool for us. I know the coaches are super excited about that, because before, some athletes coming in, they look at the gym and they don't know if they can work with it. So yeah, that's definitely going to help us a lot in the future."
 
BR: What event challenges you the most, or do you find the toughest?
Griffin: "I'd probably say pommel horse. It's not an event that I was very good at growing up, and all that, and it's one of those you have to work at every day if you want to be good. It'd definitely be either pommel horse or rings, and it shows in our lineup, too, the amount of people we have. You look at our pommel horse, they're amazing. Our ring lineup is good. Those two events are the toughest to be good at, I'd say."
 
BR: What's your favorite event to compete?
Griffin: "I'd say high bar, especially at home, last event. That's what the crowd sees, that's what ends the meet, so I'd definitely say high bar. That's the most fun for me."


 
BR: For any event, how do you go about developing or preparing a routine? How much input do your coaches offer?
Griffin: "Our coaches are pretty influential on that, but usually we'll run our routines by our coaches, which ever one is like our group leader. Usually it's John. But we'll run routines by them and then we'll kind of try to do it earlier in the summer, just like what our goal routines are, so that when we want to put new skills in, we'll train that during the summer, so then when we get into season, we're having more upgraded routines, harder routines. But yeah, throughout the summer, that's how we usually train, start getting new skills, and then once season hits, each coach kind of puts the team, and like tells them what the schedule is through the week, just so that we're not burning out people, our bodies aren't hurting and stuff like that. So yeah, that's how routines go for that."
 
BR: Team wise, what's the outlook for the remainder of the season?
Griffin: "We're doing good. We've got a really young team, which is new for us. Which is really great, too, because we got a lot of new guys bringing new stuff in to the team. But for the end of the season, bottom line, we want to be Big Ten champions. That's our goal. And then we want to bring back another trophy. Last year was our first trophy we brought home in 20 years, which was pretty great. Just keep on that legacy of Nebraska, getting better and better every year."
 
BR: I understand you enjoy longboarding in your free time. How'd you discover that and how accomplished are you?
Griffin: "Well I was. I haven't longboarded forever now. I did that a lot when I was in high school. That was super fun. That's something I do miss. I grew up in Virginia, and Virginia was just hills and all that, and then a bunch of my friends had longboards, so like on the weekend we'd have a group of like 20 people that would want to go longboarding. We'd play cops and robbers with longboards, we'd play longboard football, but yeah, it was just something super fun that we would do."
 
BR: What else do you enjoy doing in your free time outside of gymnastics?
Griffin: "One of our teammates from Canada, Mitch Tyndall, he's a big dancer, so we'll go out to Pla-more every now and then. That's fun. It's like country line dancing. Pretty much our entire teams knows Footloose dance, which is pretty fun. And then there's a bunch of guys on the team that are involved – this is actually something cool – in Young Life, which is like a Christian organization that we have here on campus. A bunch of the guys here are involved in that. So we'll go hang out with those guys. But mainly the team's pretty much together 24-7, which is cool. We got a pretty close team."
 
BR: What are your plans after gymnastics?
Griffin: "Basically I want to be a college gymnastics coach and then I want to kind of flip houses on the side and do something with that. So I'm majoring in marketing right now, but basically the goal would be to coach college gymnastics at a D-I university, and then kind of flip houses on the side. That's always been something that sounds fun to me."
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.