Caleb Rickard, a former Cal men’s gymnastics student-athlete with deep ties to the Cardinal and the Bay Area, enters his second season with Stanford women's gymnastics in 2025.
Rickard has been an enormous asset for the Cardinal, specifically with his support on both vault and floor. Since his hire in the summer of 2024, Stanford as a team and its individuals produced multiple season and career-high scores and ACC individual conference champions on both events. Throughout the 2025 season, both Taralyn Nguyen (9.975) and Anna Roberts (9.950) recorded career-best or matching performances at the ACC Championships, with Nguyen winning sole possession of the apparatus title (the only league crown to be held by a single athlete this season). Under his guidance, he helped improve the vault to its No. 18 final regular-season ranking, up nine spots from the 2024 regular season, while the floor team finished eight spots higher than in 2024 (from No. 24 in 2024 to No. 16 in 2025).
A historic 2025 campaign was capped with WCGA West Region Co-Assistant Coach awards for Smurro, Mossett and Rickard.
Rickard brought a deep understanding of coaching in both the collegiate and club levels and knowledge of both men’s and women’s gymnastics to the rising Stanford program.
Rickard joined the Cardinal after two years as the Head Coach and program manager of Stanford Boys Gymnastics (SBG), a club program located on Stanford’s campus. During his time at the helm of the SBG program, he coached proper gymnastics technique and fundamental skills to gymnasts from levels three to 10 while managing the daily operations of the club and expanding the recreational and competitive programs.
Concurrent with his time with SBG, Rickard spent the 2023 season with the Stanford Men’s Gymnastics program as a volunteer assistant coach. He was responsible for assisting the coaching staff in developing student-athletes' gymnastics skills and techniques at both the collegiate and international levels while implementing the training plan set forth by head coach Thom Glielmi. The Cardinal won its fourth consecutive NCAA Championship while Rickard was on staff.
Rickard also brought coaching experience as the Developmental Team Coach at both the Head Over Heels Athletic Arts Club and Sokol Gymnastics Academy. At both clubs, Rickard gained experience in the women’s gymnastics field, coaching proper technique to Head Over Heels’ athletes from levels four through elite and Sokol’s athletes ages eight to 18.
Rickard not only has coaching experience at the elite, club, and collegiate levels but has an established background as a collegiate athlete at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a member of California’s Men’s Gymnastics team from 2018-2022, acting as team captain during the 2020-2022 seasons. In 2021, Rickard was named an NCAA All-American for his school-record mark of 14.666 on vault at the NCAA Championships. After graduating in May of 2022, the Chino Hills, Calif. native spent three months as the Golden Bears’ volunteer assistant coach, continuing his leadership from his collegiate athletic career.
Rickard and his wife, Chelsey, were married in August of 2023.