Six men made the United States gymnastics roster for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, and one of them was a Penn State gymnast born in Hurley, New Mexico. Armando Vega became one of the most honored college gymnasts in NCAA history and then a coach who built national contenders at two Louisiana universities. He died at 90 on September 28, 2026, at his home in Dallas, Texas, WBRZ reported.

Born on October 24, 1935, Vega grew up in Los Angeles and competed for the Los Angeles Turners before heading east to Penn State and its coach, Gene Wettstone. The results came quickly. He won the NCAA parallel bars title in 1956, 1957 and 1959, the all-around crown in 1957 and 1959, and the still rings in 1959, six national titles in all. The College Gymnastics Association credits him with 16 All-America honors, tied for the fifth most ever. His last college season ended with an unbeaten Penn State team winning the 1959 NCAA championship.

Wettstone also coached the 1956 Olympic team, so Vega went to Melbourne under the man who coached him in college, according to the Olympic rosters kept by USA Gymnastics. He entered all eight men's events there, placing 15th on floor exercise, as the Americans finished sixth as a team. He kept winning at home, collecting more than ten national AAU titles through 1964, the year he was named the alternate for the U.S. team that went to Tokyo.

Coaching began in Mexico City, where he worked with Mexico's gymnasts ahead of the 1968 Olympics and led the host nation's Olympic squad. He also judged at those Games.

In 1968 he took over at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and his first team defended the school's Mid-South and NAIA championships. His gymnast John Elias became the first athlete to win both the NAIA and NCAA Division II individual national titles. In 1970 the Demons swept the NAIA and NCAA Division II team championships, the school's first NCAA team title, while Paul Tickenoff won the all-around and Vega was named NCAA Coach of the Year, as Northwestern State Athletics recalled. A sixth straight NAIA title followed in 1971, and a short-handed squad still placed second at the 1972 NAIA championships.

LSU hired him that year, and he stayed with the Tigers until the men's program ended its NCAA run in 1984. His teams were national runners-up in 1975 and 1976, piled up Southern Intercollegiate Gymnastics League titles, and regularly finished in the NCAA top 10. The NCAA named him Coach of the Year in 1977 and again in 1978. When his former gymnasts gathered in Baton Rouge for a reunion in 2011, Vega told LSU Athletics: "We were a very successful program, and I am elated to give the guys the recognition that they deserve."

USA Gymnastics inducted him into its Hall of Fame as both an athlete and a coach. Northwestern State added him to its N-Club Hall of Fame in 2007, LSU to its Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021, and the College Gymnastics Association to its Hall of Fame in 2025. Away from the gym, he later worked in land management, sales and operations in Panama.

His name is written six times among the NCAA's national champions and on the rolls of four halls of fame. Northwestern State still counts the 1970 title he coached as its first NCAA team championship, and the LSU teams he shaped through the 1970s and early 1980s turned a young program into a national contender. The rest belongs to the gymnasts he coached, from John Elias and Paul Tickenoff in Natchitoches to the LSU men who returned to Baton Rouge in 2011 to be honored as a program.