AZUSA, Calif. — Ashley Fallgren was pretty sure she wasn’t meant to be an accountant. But when she sat on a family Zoom call in March 2025, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be yet, either.

The call was her idea. She was 24, in the thick of the accounting season, and hitting “rock bottom mentally with my job,” she said. Her mom, Simone, has three siblings, and they’re anchors for Fallgren. She wanted direction, and she thought it would come from hearing what they did in their first job out of college. Her uncle’s first question, though, took a different direction.

“Okay, Ashley, let’s start here,” he said. “What is your purpose in life?”

“It was such a big question for me at the time, because I really felt like I didn’t have one,” Fallgren said.

She started crying.

A year later, Fallgren, now an Oregon assistant coach, stood on the sideline of the NCATA National Championships in Azusa. She could look across the gym and see her world — her team, her best friend and her purpose. The mental work she did bled into her team as it made a run to the semifinal round and claimed three event championships.

Fallgren was a year out of competition as a student-athlete at Gannon University and working as an accountant in New York City in April 2025, after the call. She decided to make the trip with Simone to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, anyway, for the National Championships. She was sitting in the crowd with her mom when it hit her. Fallgren turned to Simone.

“Ash, if you were looking for a sign, this is a sign.” Simone said. “You need to go out and do this.”

Later that weekend in South Dakota, Fallgren was watching her best friend, Gannon University then-assistant coach Addy Womeldorph, at event finals. The Golden Knights had a mishap in their synchronized toss heat and scored 7.500. Fallgren sent Womeldorph, her former teammate, a text from the stands: “We’ve gotta fix this,” Fallgren wrote.

“I think that was her clicking moment, that she knew she still had passion for the sport,” Womeldorph said.

At that point, Womeldorph knew she was up for the opening head coach spot at Gannon. Taking Fallgren with her as an assistant was on the table when they sat together the day before, at the championship meet, especially since Fallgren felt that she’d already learned from Womeldorph.

In New York, Fallgren was deep into “a bunch of, ‘What am I going to do with my
life?’ crashouts,” when her roommate, Iona University assistant Jenna DeCoursey, came home with an idea. She’d heard that the assistant position was opening at Oregon.

Fallgren was raised in Oregon. Simone is a part-owner of Westside Academy, a dance and gymnastics school in Tigard, Oregon, where Fallgren worked summers on and off before graduating.

“It just seemed meant to be in that moment,” Fallgren said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, is this gonna work out for me? I don’t know.’ But I’m so grateful that it did.”

Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara met Fallgren in person for the first time at an NCATA coaches’ summit in July 2025. They’d already talked on the phone after Fallgren applied, but at the summit, Susnara says, she saw Fallgren’s “genuine passion” that she looks for in her assistant coaches. Susnara has been preaching the mental fortitude that Fallgren subscribes to. Their philosophies aligned.

In Eugene, Fallgren had an instant impact. Oregon traveled to Missouri State University for its opening meet, on Feb. 8, and stumbled. Sophomore base Angelica Martin was part of a team event skill that missed. Oregon cruised against the Bears, but in a season where its team event would be a sticking point, Martin went to the new assistant coach right away. When she wor- ried in practice, it was Fallgren who helped her through it.

At Gannon, Fallgren wasn’t doing the acrobatic gymnastics skills that made Martin a 2026 All-American. What she did understand was the mental battle that Martin was talking about — the shakeup that can happen in athletes’ heads when an unexpected mistake happens. That’s what they talked about.

The skill hit in Oregon’s next meet.

“I leaned on her with that, and she’s just a really great coach through the mental side of it, and always just is the happiest person she can be,” Martin said. “She must love her job, because she’s always so happy when she does it.”

After the 2026 event finals, Fallgren stood on the side of the gym in Azusa. The mat was a mess of parents and athletes and coaches (Womeldorph included) after the last event of the weekend. She looked out, across the sideline, into the stands, and into her new world.

She saw her purpose.

“It’s just remarkable thinking back to how different of a headspace I was in a year ago,” she said at the event finals. “Now, I’m just entirely where I want to be, and I feel like I really see a future in this for me — like, forever.”