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 | Position:
Assistant Coach
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| Experience:
18th Season
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Now in his 18th season at Oregon State, Dick Foxal has more than 30 years of gymnastics coaching experience on the club, high school, college and national levels. As an assistant at OSU, he specializes in uneven bars although he has coached all four events.
Since his arrival at OSU in 1987, Beaver gymnasts have earned 49 All-America honors -- including eight on bars, Foxal's primary area of coaching. OSU added its latest All-American on bars in 2002, when Elizabeth Jillson earned first team honors. The Beavers have had four individual national titles on various events during Foxal's time with the program.
He has coached four gymnasts who have scored a total of eight 10's on bars, with the most recent coming in in 2003 when Jillson was perfect to win the the Pacific-10 title on the event. With Jillson winning in 2003, five gymnasts have won a total of seven Pac-10 Championships on bars since Foxal's arrival in Corvallis.
He was named West Region Assistant Coach of the Year for the fourth time last year, this time sharing the honor with OSU's other assistant coach, Michael Chaplin. Foxal's 2003 award was well-deserved as he coached a bars team that twice set a school record. The Beavers scored a 49.500 against Utah to break the old mark set in 1999, but the new mark didn't hold up for long as OSU reset the record with a 49.525 at the 2003 Pacific-10 Championships.
Up until 1980, Foxal worked primarily with men's gymnastics. He served as a coach for the men's junior national elite team for four years and an American squad that competed against the Japan National Team in 1980.
Foxal was the head men's gymnastics coach at the University of Washington from 1977 to 1980. He headed the women's program at Montana State from 1984 until the program was discontinued in 1987. Foxal was selected Mountain West Athletic Conference coach of the year in 1985.
As a coach on the prep level, Foxal spent three years (1972-75) as head coach of Churchill High School in Eugene, Oregon, where he guided his team to two state championships (1973 and 1974) and had two high school All-Americans. During his tenure, he received both state and national coach of the year honors.
Foxal graduated in 1970 from Central Washington, where he was a member of the gymnastics team, and he competed in the 1969 and 1970 NAIA National Championships. He earned his master's degree in physical education at CWU in 1972.
