2008 Women's NCAA Preview

Though the women's preseason rankings are not yet out, Georgia is considered the favorite at the NCAA Championships next April. It has to be. The Gym Dogs have won the last three titles, they will play host to the 2008 NCAAs in Athens, they lost no routines from last season's Super Six Final and they just began training this year in a new, state-of-the-art facility named after their coach, Suzanne Yoculan, who will retire after the 2009 season.

That's a lot of upside for one program, but Yoculan knows that a ninth team title, which would tie Utah for the record, is far from a done deal. She says that in 1997 she had her "best team ever" but lost the meet because of mistakes. "I saw how our team reacted to that," Yoculan explains.

Last April her team managed to recover from early errors, while other teams faded. "I don't know what (Florida coach) Rhonda (Faehn) or (Alabama coach) Sarah (Patterson) or anybody says to their teams, obviously, but I think that those teams did react to their mistakes," Yoculan says.

Focus was one of Georgia's themes at the 2007 NCAAs, and Yoculan used inspirational videos to prepare the collective mindset of her team last April in Salt Lake City. Before preliminaries, she showed them a Muhammad Ali tape, and before the Super Six Final the team watched "The Last Samurai." "Too much in your mind — no mind," quotes Yoculan of the film's message.

Yoculan's team adopted tunnel vision to avoid needless distractions. During Georgia's bye round at the NCAAs, sophomore Courtney Kupets stood on a bench in the locker room "singing at the top of her lungs, 'How bad do you want it? How bad to you need it?'" according to Yoculan. Soon the whole team joined in, oblivous to what was happening out in the arena.

"We spent a lot of time on focus prior to the meet," Yoculan says. "If I saw them look up (at the scoreboard) I bopped them on the head."

Yoculan says she used to scout the other teams during Georgia's bye. Now she avoids it. "I would never do that again, because I want to keep my focus on my team," she says.

Something surely affected Florida's focus last April. Ranked No. 1 at the NCAAs and feeling confident after winning their first SEC title at the expense of Georgia, the Gators finished third in the Super Six. The cause could have been inexperience, fatigue, or both. "We felt as a coaching staff that we had too many competitions last year," says Faehn, who has trimmed her schedule this season. "We were possibly freshest at SECs. We're hoping that with less meets this year, our athletes will be stronger and fresher at NCAAs."

Utah, runner-up in 2007 and still looking for that elusive 10th win, should be a factor again, but coach Greg Marsden concedes that Georgia is still the team to beat. "They have won three in a row, are hosting this year and have another good team," says Marsden, whose Utes last won in 1995.

Marsden believes Florida could be even stronger than last season, and that four-time winner Alabama has something to prove after failing to make the Super Six in 2007. (It finished ninth.) "They were embarrassed by their performance at last year's championships," he says. "I think they'll be on a mission and very comfortable in Athens."

Yoculan, on the other hand, won't feel too relaxed at home. "I'm not crazy about hosting if we're No. 1," she says. "There are some high expectations for us on campus. (The pressure) is constant."

That pressure will intensify if the Gym Dogs don't round into form by April. Five key gymnasts had surgery after last season, including two-time defending all-around champion Kupets (knee) and Tiffany Tolnay (knee and ankle), who placed fourth all-around in 2007. "We're going to get off to a slow start, no question about it," Yoculan says.

The experienced coaches know that it's not how you start, but how you finish. And since its inception in 1982, the women's NCAA championship has gone to only four different schools: Utah (9), Georgia (8), UCLA (5) and Alabama (4).

Can Florida finally be the next team to break into that exclusive club?

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