It looks like Utah's gymnastics team was able to fight off the worst-case postseason scenario and gain a shot at traveling with 10th-ranked Florida to either Logan or West Virginia for an NCAA regional meet on April 10.
The Utes scored a 197.475-195.475 win over Brigham Young, whose injury-plagued team's season has probably ended, Saturday night in the Huntsman Center.The all-around was a close battle between Ute freshman Theresa Kulikowski, who totaled 39.65, a tenth beind her career high, and two seniors Utah's Angie Leonard, with a season-best 39.55, and Natalie Broekman, who broke BYU's two-day-old school record with 39.475. Freshman Kelly Parkinson had scored 39.425 against Southern Utah Thursday.
Kulikowski scored a perfect 10 on bars, the first 10 in the Huntsman Center this season but her fourth of '99. Utah had the second-best beam total in school history, 49.625 with a career-high 9.95 from Leonard, honored along with Molly and Sarah Northrop on Utah's Senior Night before the meet.
Broekman was unaware until well after the meet that she'd done so well. "I'm mostly emotionally drained," she said, noting Thursday's BYU Senior Night festivities. "It was so nice to come here to the Huntsman Center one last time," she said, adding that the big crowds (10,902 Saturday) frightened her as a freshman. She told coach Brad Cattermole that the 1999 freshmen who fell on bars, their first event, suffered the same nerves as she had.
It was BYU's second-highest score of the season, but the Cougars had little chance to make the Region 2 field at Utah State because their Regional Qualifying Score (average of six scores) probably couldn't be raised enough to overtake Iowa State.
Utah's team score tied what No. 1-ranked Georgia got Saturday in the Southeastern Conference meet as the gymnastics regular season ended across the country. "I've said all along," said Utah coach Greg Marsden, "that if we do what we're capable of, we can compete with anybody in the country."
Utah's total, its second-best score of the season behind a 197.625 at Logan Feb. 26, wasn't enough to move the No. 3-ranked Utes ahead of No. 2-ranked Alabama (196.65 in SECs), but with Florida scoring 195.875, the Gators ambushed Oregon State (whose regular season ended last week) for 10th in the seedings.
In the new regional format, two seeded teams will be in each of six regionals, and only the top two finishers in the regional advance to the NCAA finals. The No. 1 seed is paired with No. 12 for regionals, as are Nos. 2 and 11 and Nos. 3 and 10, Nos. 4 and 7 and Nos. 5 with 6. Each regional will have six teams, with those below the top 12 rankings going to their home regional.
Teams seeded in the top 12 hosting a regional get to stay home and take their seeded pair with them, meaning Utah and Florida will travel somewhere because neither is a regional host. Based on unofficial scores from Saturday's final meets, it looks like the Utah-Florida pair and the Alabama-Ohio State pair will go to a region host that is not among the top 12 schools, meaning either West Virginia or Logan. West Virginia's field is most likely the easiest of all regionals made up of mostly teams that rarely make nationals.
Those two pair traveling to a region without a top 12 host team will find out sometime Monday where they will go. The NCAA gymnastics committee will have a conference call Monday morning and then let those schools (likely Utah-Florida and Alabama-Ohio State) know their fate.
It also looks like No. 1 Georgia, the defending national champion, will have to go cross country to Oregon State, considered to have the toughest regional because it will contains UCLA, Stanford and Washington, all strong teams not highly ranked because of the region's traditional low scoring.
The NCAA Championships are at Utah April 22-24. "We have to peak at the right time," Marsden said. It's still somewhat tenuous that the Utes might not make the field for the NCAAs in their house, though they've never not qualified. This is a different system, however.
Marsden worked his athletes hard this week after a lackluster meet at New Hampshire last week, even though it was a win. "He got us back on track," said Kulikowski. "We just need to keep it up." She said one of her skills went a bit crooked on the "perfect" bar routine but that it probably wasn't visible from the side, where judges sit, and she wasn't giving the score back.
Leonard said she felt "a little shaky inside" at first after the Senior Night fanfare, but she put it out of her mind quickly. "I'm very pleased. I had a lot of fun," she said.
Utah had one big gaffe in its first event when the wrong vault number was flashed to the judges, who had to deduct .3 from Denise Jones' first vault, which was done very well, because of the rules. That hasn't happened to the Utes in 10 years, and, taking it as a learning experience, Marsden said, "Believe me, it won't happen at regionals or nationals."