Jay Santos - Assistant Coach - Staff Directory - Iowa State University Athletics

Staff Directory

Jay Santos

Title:
Assistant Coach
Email:
Phone:
(515) 294-0555

A 30-year gymnastics veteran, including 11 years of coaching and competing at the Division I level, Jay Santos is in his fifth year as assistant coach at Iowa State. Santos serves as the recruiting coordinator and bars coach for the Cyclones.
Santos has helped guide the Cyclones to four-consecutive NCAA Regional appearances, a co-runner up finish at the 2007 Central Regional and second-place showing at the 2008 Big 12 Championships. Santos has tutored one Big 12 bars champion and six top-four conference finishers on the apparatus during his tenure at Iowa State.

This past season, Santos’ bars squad ranked as high as No. 11 nationally and Ceilia Maccani placed in the top three at the Big 12 Championship for the second consecutive season. In 2009, Santos helped guide Maccani to a Big 12 co-title on bars. Maccani also scored a 9.925 on bars in front of a record-breaking crowd of 7,224 in Hilton Coliseum. Maccani's score tied for the fourth-highest tally in ISU history. In his first season at ISU the bars squad finished No. 11 in the final 2007 rankings. Janet Anson, Maccani and Katie Lasher were named all-conference after finishing in the top four at the Big 12 Championships. Nikki Dilbert also placed third at the NCAA Central Regional. In 2008, Dilbert and Jasmine Thompson tied for third on bars at the Big 12 Championship.

Before his arrival in Ames, Santos spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Ohio State. While at OSU, he coached bars and floor and was a major factor in recruiting. He also coached five Buckeyes to All-Big Ten honors.

Prior to Ohio State, Santos served as women’s team director and head coach at Somersault Gymnastics Center in Stoughton, Mass., for four years. He coached at Somersault for a total of eight years. He was responsible for all facets of the women’s program and produced several Junior Olympic national and regional qualifiers, and many state champions. Santos served as a nationally rated men’s gymnastics judge from 1997-2001, working numerous college dual meets as well as Junior Olympic state and regional championships.

Santos graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1995, earning a business degree in operations management. He competed for the men’s gymnastics team for four seasons and during his stay at UMass the Minutemen won the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) team championship in 1995, and the New England regional championship from 1992-95. Individually, Santos was a three-time co-captain for UMass (1993-95).