Golden Bear alumnus and former U.S. National Team member Donothan Bailey will spend his second season as an assistant coach with the Golden Bears in 2027.
In his first season on Cal’s coaching staff, Bailey helped lead nine men to 11 NCAA Championships finals appearances, while both Jasper Smith-Gordon (vault) and Matteo Bardana (all-around) finished the 2026 regular season as the top-ranked athletes in their respective events to earn CGA Regular-Season All-America status. Bardana also won the Next Gen titles on all-around, rings, parallel bars and high bar at Elite Canada and was named CGA Gymnast of the Week for the first time in 2026. At that year’s MPSF Championships, Smith-Gordon earned medals on vault (silver) and pommel horse (bronze) while Theodor Roald Gadderud took bronze on vault. For their achievements in the classroom, Smith-Gordon, Bardana and Tucker Yasunaga were each named CSC Academic All-District after the season, while 10 Bears were selected as MPSF All-Academic recipients.
Prior to his arrival at Cal, Bailey spent the previous two-and-a-half years as head coach of the boys' and girls' programs at Kinetic Gymnastics, where his gymnasts collected over 40 individual state titles, as well as eight individual regional championships and an individual national title. During that time, he also spent one year (April 2024-25) as an athlete fellow with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), where he created five Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs for National Governing Bodies and was selected as the USOPC ambassador for the Chinese Olympic Committee's Ninth Annual Youth Camp in Beijing. Bailey acted as interim head coach (and later assistant coach) for the USA Gymnastics Resident Team from 2021-22, with his gymnasts earning two national team berths, a national title and a Pan American title.
He competed as a professional gymnast through 2021, which included several international assignments for Team USA. In Bailey's first post-collegiate season, he took bronze on pommel horse at the Winter Cup and went on to represent the United States at the FISU World University Games, earning gold on pommel horse while finishing fifth in the all-around, before taking pommel horse silver at the U.S. Championships. The next year, he improved his pommel horse finish at both the Winter Cup (silver) and the U.S. Championships (gold). He also medaled for Team USA at the 2017 World Championships, taking bronze on high bar, and claimed two runner-up finishes (parallel bars, high bar) at the 2018 U.S. Championships.
Bailey attended Cal from 2010-14 and helped the Bears to three consecutive top-five team finishes at the NCAA Championships (2010-12), also earning individual All-America honors in 2011 (pommel horse) and 2014 (all-around, pommel horse) while earning bronze with Team USA at the 2011 Pan American Games. He is the most recent Cal gymnast to win an MPSF title on pommel horse, doing so in 2012 and again in 2014. As a senior in 2014, he was named a finalist for the Nissen-Emery Award, which is presented each year to the nation's finest senior collegiate gymnast. Prior to his collegiate career, Bailey was a member of the U.S. Junior National Team from 2007-09 and a three-time national champion on pommel horse (2006-08).
As a junior gymnast, Bailey was a member of the U.S. Junior National Team from 2007-09, as well as a three-time pommel horse junior national champion (2006-08).
