University of Georgia Athletics
Gym Dogs ?Back 4 More? at NCAA Championships
April 22, 2008 | Gymnastics
Gym Meet Central
ATHENS, Ga. The top-ranked Georgia gymnastics team is set to defend its three straight NCAA titles, as the Gym Dogs will play host to the 2008 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships on Thursday through Saturday in Stegeman Coliseum.
They are asking all Georgia fans to “Black Out” Stegeman Coliseum for the NCAA Championships. Special black "On Target" T-shirts were made and are available for fans to purchase inside the arena.
The Gym Dogs are back at the NCAA Championships for a 25th consecutive year and are trying for a fourth straight NCAA title. They enter this year’s NCAAs with a 21-2 record, including Southeastern Conference and Regional Championships.
“It’s been a long year of ups and downs, but this team is ready to get on the floor and compete for another title,” Georgia head coach Suzanne Yoculan said. “We had probably our best all-around meet of the year at Regionals and are peaking at just the right time.
“Our seniors have a chance to win their fourth national title in four years and to do it in front of a lot of Georgia fans. The whole team knows what’s at stake. They are prepared and confident in what they have been doing all year.”
Georgia will compete in the second session Thursday at 7 p.m. along with Stanford, Utah, Michigan, UCLA and Denver. The top three finishers along with the top three from the afternoon session including Florida, LSU, Alabama, Oregon State, Oklahoma and Arkansas will advance to Friday’s Super Six meet to determine the National Champion.
Georgia is the field’s No. 1 seed and has owned a No. 1 ranking all year long except for two weeks. The Gym Dogs are also ranked first and bars, beam and floor and fifth on vault. Senior Katie Heenan and junior Tiffany Tolnay will be the team’s all-arounders while sophomores Courtney McCool and Grace Taylor and freshman Cassidy McComb will be counted on for three events each.
“We will of course be looking to our all-arounders for leadership,” Yoculan explained, “but our three-eventers will play a big role for us as well. We’ll also be counting on some key event specialists, especially senior Nikki Childs on bars and beam. Abby Stack getting us started on floor will be very important as will Hilary Mauro on beam.”
The Gym Dogs already have competed against nine of the other 11 teams in the field in 2008 -- four of them twice -- posting an 11-2 record against them. Utah and Michigan, both in the same session as Georgia, represent the Gym Dogs’ only losses of the year. They have faced all five teams in their session with a 3-2 record.
Georgia, who is coming off a first-place finish at the NCAA Northeast Regional two weeks ago, became the first team since Utah in the mid-1980s to win three straight titles last year. It was Georgia’s eighth NCAA title, second to only Utah’s nine. No team has won more NCAA titles in a row since Utah won five from 1982-86.
This year’s NCAAs are in Athens for the fourth time. Georgia won the first of those in 1989, but finished fifth in 1995 and second in 2001.
“We haven’t won an NCAA title here in almost 20 years, so we’d love to be able to get that monkey off our back,” Yoculan said. “Being at home can definitely be more pressure, but for some reason I feel very relaxed and confident and our team does too. We’ve done well in this arena all year long, so we’re just going to go out there and do at nationals what we did in the regular season.”
Georgia has finished at least third at the NCAA Championships in 19 of the last 21 years and still remains the only team to advance to the Super Six Finals every year since the start of the current championship format in 1993. Including regional, semifinal and Super Six competition, Georgia has won 22 of its last 31 NCAA meets dating back to 1998. In the last three years, the Gym Dogs have finished first at every session -- Prelims and Super Six Finals.
Of the 12 teams at this year’s NCAAs, five are from the SEC. That’s more than any other conference and is the fifth time the SEC has placed five teams at NCAAs, the last time being 2006 with the same five teams. At least four SEC teams have made the NCAA Championships 17 times since 1986 and every year but three since current format was implemented in 1993.
The SEC Champion has gone on to win the NCAA Championship seven times, six of them being Georgia. While six of the Gym Dogs’ eight titles came in years they were SEC Champions, in 1989 and 2007 they finished third and second, respectively, at SECs but still won NCAAs.
The Gym Dogs will have media and practice sessions all day Wednesday before competition Thursday. Should they advance, the Super Six will be Friday at 6 p.m. Individual event finals are Saturday at 6 p.m.
Tickets to the meet are sold out, but fans can follow online via georgiadogs.com. Free live stats and live commentary will be provided Thursday through Saturday, with free live video for Thursday and Saturday only. It will be televised by CBS on a tape-delay basis on Saturday, May 10, at 3 p.m. ET.
