This feature originally appeared in the Winter edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly. The Cal Athletics flagship magazine features long-form sports journalism at its finest and provides in-depth coverage of the scholar-athlete experience in Berkeley. Printed copies are mailed four times a year to Bear Backers who give annually at the Bear Club level (currently $600 or more). For more information on how you can receive a printed version of the Cal Sports Quarterly at home, send an email to CalAthleticsFund@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-2427.



It's long past midnight when Liz Crandall-Howell wakes with a start. A vivid dream shakes her from sleep and now she can't help but turn to her side and stir her husband, too.
 
"Hey! Why don't we try this drill with the team tomorrow?" she urges.
 
Both Crandall-Howell and her husband, Justin Howell, will readily admit that while this isn't normal behavior for most married couples, it is for them. As the husband-and-wife head coaching duo at the helm for Cal women's gymnastics, the pair brings a whole new meaning to "family dynamic" for their program.
 
"I dream about drills sometimes, and it's so vivid in the dream and in my brain that I don't want to lose it," Crandall-Howell explained. "When other people who don't work together have this, they have a journal next to their bed. He is my journal."
 
Some might call the duo crazy for sharing not only their coaching responsibilities, but sharing a house, three children and even a dog together. For them, it's not crazy – it's passion.
 
"People who aren't as passionate about something might think these decisions are irrational," Crandall-Howell said. "They might ask, 'How do you possibly spend so much time doing this activity?' For me, having a connection with someone who has that type of passion is the only way for somebody to have empathy or connect with me on that level. They get that the things I love are not irrational – that's what I'm passionate about.
 
"It was really important for me to find that in someone else," she added.
 
They found that passion in each other long after either expected it.
 
Howell and Crandall-Howell first met in the late 1990s, but it was several years before a friendship – and later, a relationship – bloomed. Initially, he knew she was a judge and coached a club team in the Sacramento area, and she knew him as a "feisty" club coach from the Bay Area. Both were married to other people at the time.
 
Through various competitions and professional interactions, a rapport developed.  Though the two were at different gyms competing against each other, they'd swap drill ideas or seek feedback by exchanging videos of gymnasts attempting skills.
 
"We connected very quickly on the 'gymnastics crazy,'" Howell said. "We had a respect for each other's passion or crazy or whatever you want to call it."
 
The pair remained friendly through Crandall-Howell's move to Las Vegas with her husband and two children, Jacob and Noah, while Howell remained at Airborne.
 
Several years later, they were both independently going through divorces. A move brought Crandall-Howell and her sons to the Santa Clara area and a job at Airborne, where she and Howell became coaching partners.
 
"As soon as we started coaching together, we challenged each other on a daily basis about what we were doing in the gym," Howell said. "I had been doing it my way for so long and all of a sudden, I was coaching with someone who could confidently coach all four events and could do it well. There was someone else coming in doing things differently that I wasn't always initially on board with."
 
The duo credits their vastly different childhoods as an opportunity to develop complementary coaching styles. An only child raised by a single mother and his grandmother, Howell spent most of his time exploring his own independence outside of the gym. Inside the gym, his training was rigorous and structured.
 
"My mom knew that it was really important to give me a lot of freedom," he said. "I would do the opposite of what I had to do if you told me I had to do it that way."
 
Meanwhile, Crandall-Howell was one of seven children who grew up in a household where each of the seven Crandall children played an instrument, participated in a sport and went to church.
 
"I was hyper – hyper-driven and hyper-competitive," she said.
 
"Every step of my every day was consumed with how I was supposed to be getting better in all of those areas."
 
Their upbringings are evident in the way they coach. Outside of the gym Howell is considered the sillier of the pair, and Crandall-Howell is more structured. On the gym floor, it's Crandall-Howell who fans can spot goofily dancing along to a routine, while Howell's more serious demeanor demands orderliness.
 
"In the gym, the marriage of those two things is the perfect balance," Crandall-Howell explained. "He can get so micro-focused in things that are detail-oriented that sometimes I wouldn't have patience for, but I can break him out of being so structured in what he is doing. Sometimes the athlete needs to know that they don't have to be perfect to succeed. Go for it and be aggressive, and you're going to find your normal and perfect way somewhere inside of there."
 
Though neither was sure they wanted to remarry, they learned they also shared a passion for things like the ocean, and music and dancing, and they shared the same family values. Eventually, their coaching chemistry expanded into romantic chemistry.
 
Finally, in late October 2010, Howell dressed up in a tuxedo, and also dressed Crandall-Howell's sons, Jacob and Noah, in suits. The trio baked Crandall-Howell a birthday cake, and when she arrived home, Howell sat her down with both sons flanking her side.
 
"I wanted to involve the boys in the process and make them feel like they were part of the decision, and for them to know that really I was asking them for us to all be a family," Howell said. "I asked all of them to marry me."
 
They were married December 2011 at San Francisco City Hall.
 
That same year, Howell was hired on as an assistant coach under Danna Durante, who was brought in to help revive a struggling Cal women's gymnastics program. Durante and Howell set the framework to rebuild the team's culture, but after just one season, Durante departed to Georgia.
 
Howell was hired as Cal's head coach in the summer of 2012. After a nationwide search for an assistant, it was clear to both Howell and the Cal administration that his longtime partner, Crandall-Howell, was the best fit for the job.
 
Since then, they've welcomed a son together – Greyson, born in 2013 – and propelled Cal women's gymnastics to the nation's elite. During their six seasons in Berkeley, they've turned Cal into a legitimate top-10 contender with two national championship appearances in the last three seasons. They've developed an Olympian and guided their student-athletes to nearly two dozen all-conference and 40 all-academic honors.
 
This October, after serving six seasons as the team's assistant and then associate head coach, Crandall-Howell officially became the program's co-head coach. The title formalized a dynamic present from the start, and a dynamic that both Howell and Crandall-Howell hopes inspire their student-athletes as they develop in their own relationships.
 
"There's a push-and-pull about the way that we challenge each other," Crandall-Howell said. "Our athletes see it. We don't hide it from each other. We're very authentic with them, because we want them to be authentic with us and create a safe place for that to happen."
 
"This is our passion. It's our crazy … they get to see how we really are," Howell added. "Everything you see in the gym is real. We argue sometimes – respectfully -- but it's all there. I think it's great for young people to see this is what a healthy relationship can look like, and these are the challenges that you're going to face when you're married, and this is how we work things out – just like you would see in a family."