Junior Standout Katelyn Rosen Ready To Roll For Bruins

“My gymnastics journey was challenging to get to college. It was a dream come true my freshman year, and now, I’m just having the time of my life.”

As much as Katelyn Rosen’s sophomore season at UCLA was a rollercoaster, we get the feeling that her junior year is about to be lit. As part of a fast-rising Bruins team that finished as the National runner-up in 2025 to seven-time champion Oklahoma, Rosen said her team’s current combination of experience, passion, and drive from the vets, combined with one of the (if not the) hottest freshman classes in the country, is exactly what could drive UCLA right to the top in 2026.

“I think we have arguably one of the best freshman classes in history, and I don’t just mean for their talent or their previous success,” Rosen told us last week. “I mean who they are as people. They’re such wonderful girls. So, of course, we’re going to highlight that, and we’re going to embrace that, and we’re going to combine it with our veterans. We still have Jordan Chiles leading us all the way. We have the knowledge and the leadership, the passion of Ciena (Alipio) and Maddie (Madisyn Anyimi). It’s all just coming together.”

Finishing second last year is exactly what Rosen said may drive this year’s team to UCLA’s first National Championship since 2018. It was, in so many ways she believes, way worse than finishing third or fourth, and may well have been the moment that will ultimately be a big part of the team’s story in 2026.

“We’re fired up. It’s as simple as that,” Rosen said. “A few points. I think if we had gotten third or fourth, we would have been jumping up and down, throwing a party. But I think we were all crying when we got second because we could taste it. We truly thought going into the last rotation, it was our time. We really, really thought we were going to win. It hit us hard when we got second. We just do not like losing at all. We’re so motivated by that. On top of that, like I said, our freshmen, I don’t want to speak for them, but I’m pretty sure this was all of their dream schools.”

This season, UCLA is super-stacked with freshmen. The class includes Tiana Sumanasekera, Nola Matthews, Ashlee Sullivan, and Jordis Eichman who all competed at the 2025 Xfinity U.S. Championships. The class is rounded out by level 10 stars, Ava Callahan and Kai Mattei.

“They have a lot of passion and energy, and that’s always super helpful for all of them to come in just ready to work,” Rosen said. “They’ve been putting in the work. And this team looks so, so strong.”

Building Back Up

Strength in team, strength in numbers, and doing it for each other is exactly what NCAA gymnastics is all about. Rosen experienced pure elation as a freshman, only to be overcome by the sometimes-overpowering expectations that come with achieving so much success so quickly as her sophomore campaign began. 

After sitting out part of 2025—something she’s spoken openly about—Rosen found a new strength and resilience in herself, and felt a reliance on her teammates she hadn’t before. Her positive attitude and transparency about what she went through are bound to help student-athletes experiencing similar situations understand that it’s OK not to be OK.

“I think it’s important for athletes to not always say they’re doing so well all the time,” she said. “I came in freshman year. UCLA was my dream school. All I was feeling was excitement. I was motivated by gratitude just for being here, just for making it here in the first place. Then I had a really, really awesome freshman season. I went into sophomore year with way too many expectations and standards I put on myself. It wasn’t from coaches. It wasn’t necessarily from the media. It was all these internal expectations I had put on myself, which were, of course, made worse by everybody saying, ‘we can’t wait to see Katelyn Rosen’s second year,’ the team leaning on me for my scores, and it just became too much. I let it get to me. I had one bad competition, and then that got in my head. Like I said on the All Things Gymnastics Podcast, my team had it handled. They didn’t need me. So, I was perfectly comfortable taking a step back.”

Rosen credits the support system around her at UCLA for allowing her the space, time, and opportunity to come back better than ever as a student-athlete and teammate. 

“I have the greatest support system possible. I was really able to lean on my family, my coaches, and my team during that darker time. My coaches told me, ‘You can take your time. We’re going to build you back up from the basics just so you can get back to that confident, cocky Katelyn that we know you can be.’”

When Rosen returned to competition in 2025, she discovered a new joy, gratitude, and satisfaction watching and cheering for her teammates. Seeing them succeed also helped ramp up her confidence when she came back.

“I’m even more happy when they succeed over me. Once it was time for me to go up, I had zero doubt. I knew I was ready. It was obviously Big Ten Championships when I went in, so it was a very high-pressure situation. But for me, I do my best with more people watching me. It was a big arena, big crowd. My team was so, so excited for me to get back out there. I was just feeling that freshman excitement again going into Big Tens, and that’s why it was so successful.”

Rosen is grateful for what she learned about herself last season, what she overcame, and how to channel that experience into a positive one going forward. “Honestly, it just made it all that much sweeter when in the Big Ten, National runner-up. I don’t think I would have been as proud of those moments had I not had a rough season leading up to it.”

Following her 2025 season, Rosen is more than ready to move forward and so excited to get back out to compete with her team and go after that National Championship.

“I’m feeling really, really good,” she said. “Honestly, I feel more confident than I did even coming in freshman year. I had a really strong summer of training, so I feel very, very good right now.”

Standing Out 

As seven-time National Champions, what sets the Bruins apart is their attention to detail, performance quality, and choreography, especially on beam and floor. In fact, floor parties aren’t just a rotation in Pauley, they’re an event. They tell a story, capture a mood, and go viral season after season. Routines from UCLA gymnastics alums like Katelyn Ohashi, Nia Dennis, Chae Campbell, and Brooklyn Moors, and current senior star Jordan Chiles, have tens and even hundreds of millions of views.

Storytelling, especially, is an area where Rosen excels, and she’s well aware of what a difference that can make in a competition once the lights go up. When she performs, it’s almost as if she’s casting a spell. “

What makes UCLA stand out is our performance quality. It is our passion for dance, our passion for connecting with the audience on a level greater than the technicality of the gymnastics, greater than the scores,” she said.

And while she won’t say what’s specifically in store for her routine this season—we’ll have to wait for “Meet the Bruins” (Saturday, December 13) she said—she did share that she’s kept the creepy theme she’s become so well-known for. “It is still very dark, very intense, very passionate. I’m very, very excited about the music because it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for the last few years. So I’m very excited to show that.”

Rosen loves the creative process working with Associate Head Coach BJ Das, who choreographs the Bruin’s routines. From music selection to editing to choreography, Rosen said it’s very, very collaborative.

“Once we have that, BJ does her magic. We put it together. It’s not like BJ goes and locks herself in a studio, comes up with a routine, and teaches it to me. We go in the gym, we play [the music], and we just play. We just dance with no pressure and see what’s clicking, see what makes me feel really cool and what makes me feel confident.

“It’s a very natural collaborative process. It’s one of my favorite moments of the year, to be honest. In college, everyone’s doing the same skills because you know what scores well. This is our chance to be ourselves and express our creative side. I love working with BJ. I say it all the time, she’s the most talented person I’ve met. She’s so inspiring, and I’m really proud of this routine.”

Beyond floor, Rosen is getting routine-ready and is so excited to show off what she’s been working on so hard during preseason, with her eyes especially on vault. “As far as routines go, I think everything’s going to look the same as it did at the end of season last year. I will say I’ve been working extremely hard on getting my vault back, and I had really good success showing it at the Intrasquad. I’m really hoping to make that vault lineup again with the Yurchenko one and a half.”

Elevated Elite Me

Rosen, who trained at Twin City Twisters—home to some of the most decorated Elite and NCAA stars in the country, including Maggie Nichols, Grace McCallum, Lexi Zeiss, Elle Mueller, and Jessie DeZiel, and Team USA’s up-and-comer Gabrielle Hardie—prior to arriving in Westwood, said NCAA gymnastics is a natural fit for her. And while some student-athletes tend to distance themselves from their Elite gymnastics experience, describing her personality, Rosen said what we’re seeing from her is just an elevated version of her Elite gymnastics-self.

“College me is just an elevated version of Elite me,” said Rosen (who mentioned Eminem’s “Without Me” was her current theme song when I asked). “I was always spunky and weird in those Elite meets! I was doing fist bumps and celebrating when some other people were like, no emotion. Like you said, I came from a very, very successful club gym. I think part of their success was that they had a college atmosphere, to be honest, in training. We played really loud music. We were free to be teenage girls, even though we were training so hard and at such a high level. I think I had that fundamental gift of being able to enjoy working hard, and that was definitely brought about by TCT for sure. Stepping into UCLA, a place of just absolute inclusion and fun and love everywhere, I just elevated it even more.”

Rosen also loves the camaraderie she found within the collective athletic community at UCLA. Being so close to the beach and the bright lights of Hollywood doesn’t hurt either.

“I think our athlete pool is very tight-knit. We share the same weight room as every other Olympic sport. We share the same recovery center as every other sport. So you get to meet so many different people and hear about what their training looks like. It’s really fun to compare our lives. But, I also just love living in LA. I’m the biggest movie fan ever. They were shooting a movie one block from where I live, literally two days ago. So that’s really, really cool to see. It is just such a magical place. We’ve got the beach 10 minutes away. You’ll probably find me there most weekends. We have something for everyone, and it’s just such a diverse place to live.”

So life is good in Westwood, and Rosen is enjoying every minute of her LA life and all of the opportunities and moments it offers, including Dancing with the Stars. She’s been able to go see the show this season to cheer on Chiles, whom Rosen looks up to. It’s been another dream-come-true experience.

“I love Jordan for a multitude of reasons, and this has been so fun. First of all, I’m so proud of her. The fact that she’s thriving on that show and thriving in the gym and showing up every day for us is incredible. It’s been really fun because I’ve been watching that show since I was maybe 8.”

Get Ready For The Future

With the season fast-approaching, gymnastics is all business in a big way right now. Following the team’s recent Intrasquad, Rosen said they’re ready. It’s about to be game time, and everyone is about to see exactly what she sees every day in the gym.

“I could feel the sisterhood,” she said. “We look really, really good. Everybody has the same goal, right? We want to win a national championship. Every single person is going to come on here and tell you that. But we’re putting in the work to do it.

“The puzzle is connecting, and we’re just having so much fun every single day in the gym. We’re owning who we are as a team and the potential that we have. I’m not going to come on here and say, ‘UCLA Gymnastics is going to be the national champions this year,’ but I really want to. I want to say that.”

For More: Beyond The UCLA Floor Routine 

Watch Katelyn’s reaction to being named to our Inside Gymnastics 50 Most Artistic List, Class of 2025!

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