That Golden State of Mind! Lacie Saltzmann Is Made For Minnesota

“From my very first conversation with Lacie, I knew she would be an incredible fit with our program,” said coach Hansen. “She is incredibly focused and determined to reach her fullest potential in all areas of her life while also showing great care and enthusiasm to all those around her.” Minnesota Head Coach Jenny Hansen

Lacie Saltzmann loves being a student-athlete. As a freshman heading into her first season as a Minnesota Golden Gopher, Saltzmann’s confidence is beaming already, and her priorities and goals as straightforward as ever. She’s in Minnesota to be a student, make memories, and help her team take the next step toward the National Championship.

“I’m just really excited for season. We look incredible. We have so much depth on all of the events. I think it’s going to be a really big year for us,” Saltzmann told us on an early Thursday morning which wrapped with the team’s second intrasquad of the season.

Over the summer, Saltzmann quickly caught our eye on social media as she shared clips of her college experience from the moment she stepped on campus. Posting training videos and a look inside her new normal from Game Days to birthday celebrations, she is soaking in the experience.

“It’s definitely been a dream come true. I think it’s everything that I thought it would be and so much more,” she said.

With a double major in Biomedical Engineering and Psychology, Saltzmann started the semester right off with an ambitious 17-hour course load. “School’s always been something that’s come pretty naturally to me. But I’m obviously, as you can tell from my major, very ambitious in that aspect. I always want to challenge myself, push myself.”

Sweet Sixteen

Along with balancing a busy training schedule with classes and labs, there’s one piece of Saltzmann’s story that makes what she’s setting out to do (especially as a freshman!) even more impressive.

Saltzmann, who trained at Texas Dreams under coach Kim Zmeskal, took first place in the All-Around, bars, beam, and floor at the 2025 Texas State Championships. She also placed third on beam and eighth in the All-Around in the junior division at the 2023 U.S. Championships, and won the 2022 Hopes Classic. At just 16, she committed to Minnesota and was already on campus mapping out her debut season by the time she turned 17.

“The team has just been so welcoming and encouraging through this whole transition process, especially deciding to graduate a whole year early and start my college journey at 16. That was definitely a really big decision for me. I wasn’t quite sure what the right answer was, but I can say being here now and having been on the team for a few months, it was just absolutely the right fit for me,” she said.

“We look incredible. We have so much depth on all the events. And I’m excited to ride those inevitable waves and see where everything falls. I’m so grateful for the opportunity.”

Texas >>> Minnesota

As a university and as a gymnastics program, Minnesota offered everything Saltzmann wanted. Always thinking ahead to her next goal, she’s as focused on school and gymnastics as she is on what happens once the chalk dust settles on her career as a student-athlete.

“A big thing for me in my college recruiting journey was academics,” she said. “That was my number one priority. I wanted a program that really valued that. It wasn’t just on paper; it was also ingrained in their values. It wasn’t just the pursuit of excellence in the gym, but in the classroom. Gymnastics is going to end after four years, and I want to make the most of that time. But, I also want to be ready for that next step. Minnesota really checked that box.”

Saltzmann said that along with their athletic goals, high academic standards drive her team forward every day. It’s something they all share, and it is a huge part of the team’s culture. 

“You can just see from all the girls on the team, I feel like everyone knows where they’re going, not only in the gym. We obviously all have the same big goal of making it to Nationals and hopefully even more along the way, but also in the classroom and excelling in there.”

Being so young, Saltzmann noted her parents definitely had certain reservations about her being on campus and starting her NCAA journey so early. But Saltzmann felt ready. As her goals and wish list for the right mix of academics and athletics fell into place, Minnesota quickly rose to the top. 

“As for deciding to go a year early, that was hard. It was very unexpected,” she said. “I remember going into recruiting and I was talking with my parents about it on June 15th, and I asked them, ‘What are your thoughts on me graduating a year early?’ I was already very ahead in high school. It wouldn’t have been that hard. And they said, ‘No, you’re not going at 16. We’re not having this discussion.’”

A phone call with Minnesota head coach Jenny Hansen early last December changed all of that.

“I’m on the phone with Jenny—she’s always very good about checking in with the recruits—we usually had a call with her, or one of the other coaches once a month or once every two weeks, which was really nice to stay in the loop and still feel valued in that process. A few minutes into the call, she said, ‘So we have an extra spot in ‘25. What are your thoughts?’

“I was just so struck. I was so excited and felt like this was what I wanted to do. I was on the phone with my mom that night, and she asked me how my day was. She asked about my call with Jenny, and I told her [Jenny] asked if I wanted to go a year early. It was dead silent on the other end of that phone! [My mom] said she’d think about it, and ultimately she was like, ‘this is the right decision.’”

Best Of All Worlds

Feeling welcomed and so supported by the team and the coaching staff made the transition easier, and Saltzmann hasn’t looked back. She’s enjoying the camaraderie she has with her teammates, something Elite gymnastics really didn’t offer, and at times, left her feeling isolated.

“I definitely thrive in that team environment. Going into the recruiting process, it definitely made me appreciate how much I wanted a team and something that really felt like a tight-knit family. Because as I said, gymnastics is going to end after four years, but I don’t want the relationships that I’ve made in those four years to end with that. I want those to carry longer. There’s only so much you can control about what we’re going to achieve, and hopefully that’s winning a Big Ten title, winning the regular season, going to NCAAs. We also have control over the memories we’ve made and the experiences we’re going to share together. I think picking a program that was going to allow me that opportunity is really special. From the minute I stepped on campus in Minnesota, it just felt like that and so much more.” 

Preparation and focus are central to Saltzmann’s day-to-day schedule, which isn’t for the faint of heart. With a math and science focus and labs that can run up to three or four hours, Saltzmann has already seen firsthand the importance of working with her academic advisor, whom she calls phenomenal, to help manage her day. Her Monday is front-loaded with four classes that start at 8 a.m., and practices are from 1-5 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and 9:30 to noon on Saturday. On Wednesdays, she enjoys doing yoga with the team to get in a little bit of relaxation. 

Saltzmann also admitted that preseason has, for sure, had its adjustments, but she’s settled in now.

“The first two weeks were definitely a transition period. But, I feel like that’s always how it is. The support staff we have academically is really important, too—between the academic advisor, not only through athletics, but also through the College of Science and Engineering, and our academic tutors. That’s really helpful, especially as we get into season and some of those Friday classes you start to miss a little bit. I’m starting to see how to be able to juggle that during season.”

Behind Saltzmann’s success, confidence, and drive is her faith. Saltzmann is Jewish and has found a close-knit community on campus, and a new opportunity to be a role model. “That’s a big part of who I am. I’ve been trying to get connected with the Jewish community on campus and I’ve made a lot of great relationships there. Being a role model for these younger Jewish athletes is really important to me, because it shows you can do it. You can excel in the classroom, socially, academically, and as an athlete. You can do it all, and you can have these three distinct branches of your life along with everything else in between.”

Dreaming Big

With the hype surrounding young athletes during their recruiting journeys, official visits, signing day celebrations becoming social media events across the country, and NIL opportunities circling overhead, Saltzmann says staying true to her foundation, faith, and goals is what worked best for her when asked what advice she’d offer to young women starting the NCAA recruiting process.

“You want to feel valued as a person over a student, over an athlete,” she said. “At the end of the day, you’re a person first. The team dynamic is really important. Academics are important. Obviously, you don’t want to be limited in that sense. I would just say dream big. There’s no harm in dreaming big. If you dream super big and you miss it by a little bit, at least you got a lot further than you probably otherwise would have been.”

With such high standards set for herself, Saltzmann is ready for her freshman campaign to begin. She’s also reminded daily of something Zmeskal instilled in her when things get overwhelming. 

“Kim was really influential to me, teaching me to give myself grace,” Saltzmann said. “She always told me, ‘I want you to look back and I want you to be proud of what you accomplished and not have any regrets.’ Gymnastics is hard. No one’s picking it because it’s easy. Being able to embrace the hard days and celebrate the wins is important. Being able to learn from the hard days and grow from that is really important.”

As preseason quickly starts comes to a close and the calendar flips from November to December to January, Saltzmann is excited to get started. She’s been having a blast during the Intrasquads, and said there’s no holding back with this team, who are set on a championship mindset and being the team to beat in the Big Ten. She’s focused on all four events, including a new vault—“Paige Zancan’s vault“ as Saltzmann referred to it. While it might not be ready for this season, Saltzmann is definitely having fun working on it. Overall, she’s “striving for that 1% better every day” as her routines come together.

“Our end goal, our main objective that we immediately came up with is Nationals. And we are determined to get there,” she said. “We are going to set the standard, and we’re going to set it high and we’re going to do everything in our power to make that happen.”

With her college journey just beginning and so much ahead of her, Saltzmann brings it all back to one thing: how the stars aligned perfectly at Minnesota. “This one just felt right for me. I can’t even put that into words. It just felt so perfect, and it still feels that way. I’m just grateful that I went with my gut and I went with where it felt like home and where I felt loved.”

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