Robert Noll’s story begins in Chicago.
When Noll was nine, his family traveled to Chicago to watch the Michigan men’s gymnastics team compete in the annual Windy City Invitational. The meet features some of the best gymnasts from around the country, including those on his favorite team.
But it wasn’t the Wolverines’ performance in the competition that captivated the young gymnast. It was a fateful encounter at the Embassy Suites where both his family and the Michigan men’s gymnastics team were staying. The hotel was designed so that visitors could see all the floors from the inside if they looked up. When Noll did that, he saw the Wolverines warming up on their floor.
“Robert, at that moment, he instantly became obsessed with the U of M team,” Kari Martin, Noll’s mother, told The Michigan Daily. “And it was funny too, because some of the U of M guys that weekend wore Speedos in the pool. And when I tell you Robert wore Speedos for the next five years, I’m not even kidding.”
From a hotel in Illinois to Michigan’s starting high bar lineup in the National Championship this Friday, Noll’s gymnastics journey has taken him to heights he only dreamed of as a kid.
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Noll began gymnastics when Martin enrolled the both of them in a “Mommy and Me” class when he was three years old. An active child, Noll played a number of sports, but ultimately followed a path in gymnastics. Growing up in Michigan, Noll fell in love with both the sport and, more specifically, the Wolverines.
Noll’s infatuation with gymnastics grew from that Embassy Suites encounter, manifesting itself in the red dye that he put in his childhood mohawk to represent his gym’s colors. But it wasn’t an easy journey for him, primarily because, as he readily admits, he struggled. In fact, Noll still holds a dubious record in Olympia Gymnastics Academy’s preseason mock competition.
“Robert still holds the record, to this day, of the lowest event score on all of the events with a -2.600,” Nino Guerra, Noll’s former coach at Olympia, told The Daily.
Negative scores are impossible in gymnastics, but Guerra says that the coach who was judging the competition told Noll all the things he would have taken points off for — repeated falls, missed skills and a plethora of other errors — which left Noll with the lowest score in the gym’s history.
It turned out, though, that Noll wasn’t unskilled despite his low scores. He just hadn’t grown into his skills yet. As Noll grew, he was able to move more fluidly, and his untapped talent finally exploded. Guerra had worked with him on upgraded dismounts from the high bar since Noll was young, but it had taken a backseat. When they returned to the skills after Noll had grown, Guerra decided to resume the training with a double flip dismount tap on hard mats.
And Noll stuck it.
So Guerra upgraded him to a full twisting double back a few weeks later — an even more difficult skill. Guerra put him on a hard mat and Noll stuck it again.
“From there, all of the other skills started (with Noll saying) ‘I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to learn this, I want to learn this,’ ” Guerra said. “Now I’m the one that’s, instead of trying to convince him, (I’m saying) ‘Hey, man, we can learn this skill. We can do this.’ … That was super cool.”
That passion for learning new skills only grew once Noll realized his potential, and he fell in love with learning new skills and flying through the air. It’s what sparked his dream to join Cirque du Soleil after he graduates, despite working towards a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the Ross School of Business.
“I don’t think I want to do (gymnastics) competitively after college,” Noll told The Daily. “Being able to join the circus I’d one, get to travel the world and two, continue doing high bar and other sorts of gymnastics events. … I’ve never done the trapeze, but I’ve seen so many videos, and it looks so cool to be able to do essentially high bar with two people. The first thing that got me interested in Cirque du Soleil was they have swinging rings, so instead of ours, which are still, they swing.”
As Noll dreams of running off to join the circus, he knows that at some point, he will no longer be physically able to continue with acrobatics. His drive to earn a BBA stems from his mom, dad and stepdad all being small business owners and his desire to control his future, possibly opening a gymnastics gym.
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Watch Fred Richard’s TikToks and you’ll notice that he tags one teammate over and over: @robert.noll04. Both sophomores, the two began creating content together during their freshman year. Noll’s love of gymnastics, entrepreneurial spirit and the flair that led to his red mohawk drew him to make TikToks with Richard.
“Fred was TikTok famous already before I actually met him,” Noll said. “Freshman year, we had a lot of time on the weekends together, and he was making content anyways, so (I) just started coming in, filming some videos with him and it was fun and now (I) just keep doing it.”
Noll has been featured in some of Richard’s most popular videos, including one that SZA (a former gymnast herself) commented on, and their reply video. And while the SZA video is Richard’s favorite, Noll’s favorite is the one where he and Richard reenacted the famous “Dirty Dancing” lift, but with several flips thrown in.
“Gymnastics is definitely that type of sport where you try a lot of fun things,” Richard told The Daily. “You try these crazy skills every day. Usually you’re following a codebook. But when it comes to TikTok, creating content — we have the freedom to do whatever we want, try whenever we want. … We’ve got the personality for it and we’ve gotten millions and millions of views.”
Producing gymnastics content with his friend has been another way for Noll to experiment with the circus tricks he loves so much. His mom loves them, too.
“I think they’re hilarious,” Martin laughed. “Especially the days when he does little dances. It makes me happy because it gives me a glimpse of him having fun, right? Because I know school is really stressful. … Those boys — they compete. They live in competition mode because each week, they practice together, but then they compete against each other to compete on the weekends. So to watch him be able to unwind and have fun with the TikToks — I love it.”
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Noll will likely compete on the high bar on Friday in the NCAA Championship, just as he has all season. And after the season ends, he’ll have exams and Richard will go on to Olympic training.
But while Noll is on the high bar this weekend, he’ll get to show off on his favorite event on college gymnastics’ biggest stage. And for that moment, Noll will be living the dream of his nine-year-old self, becoming a role model for younger gymnasts on the bar and through social media — a role he only dreamt of after that encounter in a Chicago hotel.
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