Sport: Gymnastics
Born: March 10, 1981
Town: Hackettstown, New Jersey
Kristen Ana Maloney was born March 10, 1981 in Hackettstown, NJ. She was the youngest of three children born to Linda and Rich Maloney, who moved the family west to Pen Argyl in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where Kristen and her older sister, Carrie, began taking gymnastics classes together when Kristen was six. While Carrie gravitated toward team sports, Kristen, who was painfully shy, showed early promise and great enthusiasm at Donna and Bill Strauss’s Parkettes Gymnastics, in Allentown.
Kristen began competing in national and international events in 1993 and was invited to qualify for the 1996 Olympic team. She did not make the cut, but as members of the gold medal-winning “Magnificent Seven” concluded their competitive careers, Kristen rose to prominence despite two serious injuries (right shin, left shoulder) suffered in her final year at Parkette. She was treated by Dr. Larry Nassar, but because it was Parkettes policy to have a coach in the room at all times, so she was not molested by USA Gymnastics’ notorious team physician.
In 1998, Kristen was the US all-around champion, and also won gold on the balance beam at the 1998 Goodwill Games. She repeated as national all-around champ in 1999 and was named USA Gymnastics Gymnast of the Year. She was also a finalist for the Sullivan Award, which recognizes the outstanding American amateur athlete; the basketball-playing Miller sisters, Coco and Kelly, shared the award. That year, Kristen competed as a member of the US team at the World Gymanstics Championships for the second.
In 2000, Kristen finished second in the all-around at the US Championships and third at the Olympic Trials to earn a spot on the US team headed to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics. The squad—which included Dominique Dawes, Amy Chow, Tasha Schwikert, Elise Ray and Amy Dantzscher—was completely shut out of the individual medal tally and finished fourth in the team all-around. A decade later, the IOC took away China’s bronze medal for using an underage gymnast. Kristen and her teammates received their bronze medals at a ceremony in Hartford.
By then, Kristen was a coach at the University of New Hampshire. In the intervening 10 years, she was an All-American at UCLA, scoring several perfect 10s during her college career despite a continuing series of nagging injuries that kept her off the floor for two seasons. UCLA won the national team title in 2001, 2003 and 2004. In Kristen’s final college event, in 2005, she won gold in the vault and floor exercise and finished second to Schwikert in the all-around.
After college, Kristen worked as a gymnastics coach and toured with Cirque du Soleil in Europe. She returned to coaching at the University of New Hampshire and then at Iowa State. In 2011, Kristen was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame and, in 2017, she was inducted into the UCLA Sports Hall of Fame.