Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three articles highlighting the accomplishments of the former ISU men’s gymnastics team. The team was founded in 1961 and eliminated in 1994.

The used equipment brought in from the physical education department barely fit through the hole in the wall that joined two handball rooms.

One room provided just enough room for practice to take place under the bleachers of Clyde Williams Field.

Though the slant of the ceiling kept the first official Cyclone gymnasts from practicing a high bar dismount, few teams in school history would be able to set the bar as high as the former ISU men’s gymnastics team.

“I felt the potential was there to do well,” said former head coach Ed Gagnier, 1524 Glendale Ave. “When you’re young and you have all of the confidence in the world, all you have is high expectations [that] add self-confidence.”

After a successful collegiate career at Michigan, Gagnier said he knew when he came to Iowa State in 1961, he didn’t have anything more than the opportunity to start a great collegiate gymnastics team.

With no official budget, anything but modern equipment and only 10,000 ISU students from which to select a team, most people would have let this so-called opportunity pass by.

“It wasn’t that I could be disappointed,” Gagnier said.

“The opportunity was there in the end.”

Step by step, Gagnier said he built up his equipment, his facilities and his athletes, marking each milestone up as an accomplishment.

Ten years later, he had a national championship team.

Savoring the first one

Gagnier fondly recalls the first time his team took home the NCAA title. A prot‚g‚ of the strong Michigan tradition, Gagnier said he had always wanted to make his university proud by returning with his own successful team.

After years of being denied a matchup by the Michigan coaching staff, Gagnier finally got the chance for his ISU team to square off against Michigan in 1970 at the national championships in Philadelphia, where the Cyclones finished as national runners-up to the Wolverines by one-tenth of a point.

Though Gagnier said he felt extremely frustrated, it provided him with the perfect opportunity to showcase his team the following year, when the Cyclones dominated the competition and took home their first team national title in 1971 in the Wolverines’ home arena in Ann Arbor, Mich.

That competition marked the beginning of Iowa State’s national domination. The next year in Ames, Iowa State finished national runner-up.

The following years, the Cyclones would reclaim their crown, bringing home three national team titles in four years.

What it’s like to be the best

Though Gagnier said most coaches always remember their team’s first victory the most affectionately, he said he can’t say that one championship team is more important to him than another.

“I’d be hard-pressed to say that one team is better than the other,” he said. “To win [the national title], everyone has to perform up to their very best.”

Feelings of elation and a sense of pride for the university surge through national championship team members, Gagnier said.

“It’s like representing your country in the Olympics,” Gagnier said.

“You become a secondary factor. The feeling of representing an entire university takes precedent and gives you a feeling of great satisfaction.”