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CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS - MARCH 21: Elliot Goldsmith of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights competes on the floor exercise during the 2026 Big Ten Gymnastics Championships at State Farm Center on March 21, 2026 in Champaign, Illinois. (Photo by Craig Pessman/Big Ten/University Images via Getty Images)
For a Rutgers Gymnastics program that just posted the highest team ranking in its history, the natural question is how to keep chopping towards an even stronger future. Part of the answer is already on its way to Piscataway as the Scarlet Knights will welcome a three-gymnast class for the 2026-27 season. This will be a group that blends a New Jersey-trained all-arounder, an Olympic-coached Canadian beam specialist, and a Level 10 standout with an unmistakable football bloodline who reshaped her own timeline to arrive a year early. Before getting to who’s coming, though, it’s worth understanding what they’re walking into.
Not long ago, Rutgers gymnastics was an afterthought in the Big Ten, but the 2026 season rewrote that narrative entirely. Under head coach Anastasia Candia, a Rutgers alum named WCGA Region 3 Coach of the Year in her first full season, the Scarlet Knights posted the highest team ranking in program history. They also set records with a 196.550 regular-season high and a 196.300 at the NCAA Regionals, and advanced to a regional semifinal for the first time under the current four-site format. Senior Gabrielle Dildy anchored the effort with a career-high 39.525 all-around, earning All-Big Ten First Team honors, while graduate captain Emily Leese returned from injury to set a program vault record with a 9.95. It was, by any measure, the best season the program has ever had, and the standard the newcomers are inheriting.
Mariyah Aranbayev
The headliner of the class is Mariyah Aranbayev, an incoming freshman from Jamaica Estates in Queens, N.Y. A two-time Level 10 national qualifier, Aranbayev trained across the river in the homeschool program at North Stars Gymnastics Academy in Boonton, N.J., under former two-time U.S. National Team member Ashley Umberger. She arrives on a full athletic scholarship after capping her club career at the 2026 USA Gymnastics Development Program National Championships in Oklahoma City, where she tied for ninth on vault with a 9.775, placed 14th on beam and finished 34th in the all-around. A year earlier, she took second on the uneven bars with a 9.700 at the New Jersey Level 10 State Championship before advancing to regionals.
Vault and bars project as her quickest routes into the lineup, and her coach raves about the competitor behind the scores. Umberger has described her as an athlete who was “born to do gymnastics” and one who, after roughly a decade in a sport she took up inspired by her gymnast mother, has grown into a leader for the gym’s younger athletes.
Reese Wilson
The class’s international flavor comes from Reese Wilson, a Canadian elite and three-star recruit out of Oshawa, Ontario. Wilson trained at Gemini Gymnastics, one of Canada’s premier clubs, founded by 1980 Olympic all-around champion Elena Davydova, a pedigree reflected in a résumé built on the Canadian elite circuit. She committed to Rutgers back in the fall of 2024, part of a recruiting weekend in which the Scarlet Knights hosted eight gymnasts from the 2026 class.
Her signature is the balance beam, where a clean back-handspring-to-two-layouts series projects as a genuine lineup weapon if she settles in quickly. On an event that tends to reward poise and repetition, and one where Rutgers will have routines to replace, a newcomer like Wilson who can deliver there right away would be especially welcome.
Sophia Stellato
Sophia Stellato’s arrival comes with the most unusual backstory of the three, and a familiar name for NFL fans. The Level 10 out of the Yellow Jackets program is the daughter of Sean Stellato, the Salem, Massachusetts based agent who became a viral sensation as the representative of New York Giants quarterback Tommy DeVito. Her mother, Krista, was a gymnast in her own right. A Marblehead, Massachusetts, product, Sophia won a Massachusetts state title on floor and qualified for the Level 10 National Championships in Oklahoma City, with floor and beam as her calling cards.
Her path to Piscataway took a turn this spring, as she committed to Rutgers for 2027-28. However, Stellato opted to graduate high school early and join the Scarlet Knights a full year ahead of schedule, for 2026-27. The move folds into a comeback already underway, as she returned to competition after a layoff that followed a 42nd-place all-around finish at the 2023 Level 10 Nationals. Reclassifying a year early is no small decision, and how quickly she rounds into form will be one of the season’s quieter storylines worth tracking.
How much the trio helps in year one is the open question, and recent history offers an encouraging gauge for Aranbayev, Wilson, and Stellato. A season ago, true freshman Vivienne Larsen, now a rising sophomore, made her collegiate debut in the opening week on vault and, by the postseason, tied for the vault title with a 9.850 at the NCAA Regional first round. In other words, freshmen can crack this lineup and score immediately, and Candia’s staff has shown it will put first-year gymnasts in position to contribute the moment they earn it.
The fit lines up, too. Aranbayev’s vault and bars, Wilson’s beam, and Stellato’s floor and beam map onto events where a decorated senior class, led by the program’s all-around standout and its vault record-holder, is moving on, leaving real production to replace. None of that guarantees instant impact as depth at this level is hard-won, and lineup spots are settled in the gym, not on paper. Yet if the newcomers follow the path Larsen just blazed, Rutgers has a credible case that this small class can punch above its size.
The blueprint for future success in 2026-27 is clear enough for Rutgers Gymnastics. After a year that pushed the program to heights it had never reached, the next group is already on its way to Piscataway, and if the Scarlet Knights’ recent trajectory is any indication, the climb may not be finished yet.
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