University of Georgia Athletics
1998 Season Review
October 25, 2006 | Gymnastics
1998 NCAA Champions
1998 NCAA Championships
1. Georgia – 197.725
2. Florida – 196.350
3. Alabama – 196.300
4. Utah – 196.025
5. UCLA – 195.750
6. Arizona State – 195.450
Kim Arnold – NCAA All-Around and NCAA Balance Beam Champion
Jenni Beathard – NCAA Balance Beam Champion
Karin Lichey – NCAA Floor Exercise Champion
• 1998 SEC Champions
• 1998 NCAA S.E. Regional Champions
• 1998 NCAA Champions
• NCAA and SEC Coach of the Year
• NCAA Assistant Coach of the Year
• NCAA record 198.575 team score
• Tied NCAA record 49.650 beam set
• SEC Gymnast of the Year
• Honda and AAI American Award winner
• Top two gymnasts in the nation
• Three individual NCAA titles
• NCAA record 39.875 all-around score
• 25,000+ hits to web site during NCAAs
April 16-18, 1998 • Los Angeles, Calif.
With the largest margin of victory in over ten years, Georgia won its fourth NCAA Championship. Just as they had in 1993 when the program won its last NCAA title, the Gym Dogs began the Super Six competing on the uneven bars. And the rotation was just as successful in 1998. Even with the victory in hand, Karin Lichey put the exclamation mark on the win with her 10.0 vault as the final competitor for the Gym Dogs.
Head coach Suzanne Yoculan was named NACGC Coach of the Year and assistant coach Doug McAvinn was named the NACGC Assistant Coach of the Year.
Kim Arnold won the AAI American Award, the first Georgia gymnast to be honored as the nation's top senior gymnast. Arnold and Lichey were a one-two punch in the all-around standings, with Arnold successfully defending her 1997 title as the overall winner. Both were five-time All-Americans, becoming the second and third UGA gymnasts to earn the maximum number of first-team awards in a single season. Arnold and Jenni Beathard shared the beam title to give Georgia its first individual title on that event. Karin Lichey won her first individual NCAA title when she scored a 9.950 for her floor routine. Georgia had the most gymnasts competing in the individual event finals of any school with seven, and its 18 first-team All-America honors were the most for any school in 1998.
“As Good As It Gets” has more meaning to the 1998 Georgia gymnastics team than just being the title of the in-flight movie the Gym Dogs saw on their way to the ’98 NCAA Championships.
It’s also an apt summation of UGA’s performances throughout 1998 since the Gym Dogs were as good as it got every week, all the way through to the closing scene — the national championships.
No Hollywood screenwriter could have scripted a better season for Suzanne Yoculan’s 15th team. A 35-0 record and the program’s fourth NCAA title were the story plot of 1998. And the fun continued all the way through the final credits.
“We knew this was a special team right from the first day of practice,” Yoculan said. “All we’ve had to do is turn on the lights and get them on the bus. That’s the kind of team it’s been. They’ve managed themselves, they’ve taken care of themselves, they’ve called their own team meetings. They were a team that was on a mission. We were definitely led by the six upperclassmen.”
The two seniors, Kim Arnold and Julie Ballard, along with juniors Jenni Beathard, Stacey Galloway, Karin Lichey and Sam Muhleman were the backbone of the team. The upperclassmen performed 16 of the 24 routines in the preliminaries and in the Super Six team finals at the NCAAs.
1998: As Good as it Gets
• Georgia finished the season undefeated at 35-0, the first time a gymnastics team had a perfect season since 1993 when the Gym Dogs did so en route to their last NCAA team title.
• A Gym Dog has claimed at least one individual event title at each of the last NCAA Championships, the longest active streak for individual NCAA titles by any program in the country.
• Karin Lichey mounted a tremendous injury-free campaign for the first time in her career at Georgia, taking No. 1 rankings on two events and a No. 2 all-around ranking. She nailed four 10.0s on the uneven bars and vaulted a perfect score three times.
• Kim Arnold, Julie Ballard, Jenni Beathard, Sam Muhleman and Brooke Andersen earned Academic All-SEC honors. As a team, the Gym Dogs recorded a 3.42 GPA, their best in-season team GPA in 15 years.
• At home and on the road, the Georgia gymnastics team had record fan appeal. At home, an average of 8,944 fans packed Stegeman Coliseum, the largest average home attendance for the team in the program's history. On the road, N.C. State and Michigan set new attendance records when they hosted Georgia. At Florida, Alabama and Auburn, all three teams had their largest crowds of the season when the Gym Dogs were in town.
• A sell-out crowd of 9,951 witnessed Georgia’s home opener versus UCLA. It was the first time that the Gym Dogs’ first home meet of the season had been in front of a capacity crowd.
• The Gym Dogs swept the individual event titles at the SEC Championships and at the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships. At the SEC Championships, Kim Arnold successfully defended her all-around title, and also brought home the floor and beam titles. (Arnold was also named the SEC Gymnast of the Year.) On bars, the first four Gym Dogs (Arnold, Sam Muhleman, Julie Ballard and Kathleen Shrieves) scored a 9.90 to tie for third overall, followed by Karin Lichey and Jenni Beathard’s first-place 9.950. Lichey took the vault title with a perfect 10.0. In all, seven Gym Dogs stood atop the awards stand as a top-three finisher. At Regionals, Karin Lichey set a new NCAA Championships record with her 39.875 all-around score. In addition the all-around crown, she also won the vault, bars and floor exercise titles. Shrieves took the beam title with a career-best 9.975.
