Mary Elise Ray was born on February 6,1982 and is an American gymnast who represented the United States at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the 1999 World Championships.
20 Facts About Elise Ray
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Elise Ray was the head gymnastics coach at the University of Washington from 2016 to 2020.
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Elise Ray earned her first US national team berth as a junior in 1996 and turned in a strong performance in her international debut, the 1996 Junior Pan American Championships, placing second in the all-around and winning gold on the uneven bars and floor exercise.
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Elise Ray continued to excel in the years that followed, picking up an uneven bars silver medal at the 1998 Goodwill Games.
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At the 1999 World Championships in Tianjin, China, Elise Ray was the highest-ranked American of the competition, finishing eighth in the all-around.
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Elise Ray won both the US National Championships and the Olympic Trials in 2000.
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At the Sydney Olympics, Elise Ray was the only American woman to qualify for an event final, balance beam.
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Elise Ray was one of the gymnasts who vaulted before the error was discovered; she fell on both her warmup and competition vaults.
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Gymnasts who had vaulted on the incorrectly set apparatus were invited to redo their vaults at the end of the session; Elise Ray accepted this offer and ended up in 13th place with her revised score.
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Elise Ray placed eighth in the beam final, bringing an end to a very disappointing Olympics for USA Gymnastics.
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Elise Ray crowned a very successful NCAA career by leading her team to the Super Six finals in 2005, and winning a silver on beam.
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Elise Ray performed for three years in Cirque du Soleil, where she was a member of the Cadre team in the Las Vegas resident show O Elise Ray performed in the Cirque Show, Love.
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Elise Ray serves occasionally as a color commentator for Big Ten Network broadcasts of women's gymnastics.
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Elise Ray coached at Carroll Gymnastics Center in Hampstead, Maryland, afterward.
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On September 22,2011, Elise Ray joined the Washington Huskies gymnastics program as an assistant coach, replacing her former Michigan teammate Shanna Hannan and reuniting with head coach Joanne Bowers, who was an assistant coach at Michigan.
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On May 27,2016, Elise Ray was named the new head coach of the Huskies program following the resignation of previous coach Joanne Bowers; she had been with the University of Washington for five years.
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Elise Ray resigned her coaching position in October 2020, as she and her family moved away from the Seattle area.
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Elise Ray has two eponymous uneven bars skills listed in the Code of Points and another that is not official in the Code of Points due to its low difficulty value.
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Elise Ray graduated from the University of Michigan with the most All-America honors in the program's history.
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Elise Ray is the Big Ten Conference's all-time leader in Gymnast of the Week citations, earning nine in her career.