Most years, Utah's prowess on the balance beam has been its great ace in the hole, the thing that's made the Ute gymnasts champions, or close to it.
This season, beam "has held us back from being a phenomenal team," coach Greg Marsden said.
It's still a good beam team but has suffered, Marsden says, from apparently trying too hard.
The Utes have spent the past two weeks concentrating on beam in practices as they prepared for tonight's NCAA South Central Regional at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Utah is the top-seeded team in the region, ranking No. 5 nationally, and tonight it meets No. 8 Florida, No. 18 Arizona, No. 25 Arkansas and unranked Illinois and Illinois-Chicago for the right to advance to the 2004 NCAA Championships at UCLA on April 15-17.
The top two finishers from tonight's regional, and the top two finishers in the other five regionals around the country, make up the 12-team field at nationals in two weeks.
Utah is the only team in the country to have never not qualified for the national championship field.
But enhancing that record may depend upon not counting a fall on beam — the event on which the Utes open tonight.
Marsden was undecided about whether opening on beam will be good or bad. Usually, teams hate opening on beam because they have so much adrenaline pumping it's better to open on an explosive event like vault or floor. Then again, it may allow the Utes to completely focus themselves before the meet for beam.
"If we hit beam, we will be unstoppable," said Ute senior Melissa Vituj, who is Utah's highest-ranking all-arounder, tied for fourth in the NCAA with a regional qualifying score of 39.66 — .01 ahead of junior teammate Annabeth Eberle — and a career-high of 39.875 set Feb. 27. That's the third-highest score in Utah history, and she's coming off a 39.80 on March 19.
Vituj said the Utes have been starting practices the past two weeks on beam and treating workouts like competitions, complete with the byes that they'll have to sit through tonight and at nationals. "You get all pumped up to start a competition and then you sit down for 30 minutes," Vituj said.
Veterans have tried to acclimate freshmen Rachel Tidd, Nicolle Ford and Stephanie Lim to the hurry-up-and-wait postseason style.
Tidd is expected to join Vituj and Eberle going all-around tonight, and Ford could be used in all four events if needed, though Marsden doesn't want to jeopardize her sore back unless he has to for the team to advance.
Lim and senior Veronique Leclerc have been out of practices most of the past couple weeks, Leclerc with a pulled hamstring and Lim with a pulled calf muscle. Both worked out Wednesday and did pretty well, so Marsden was hopeful of using Lim on floor and possibly on vault and Leclerc on vault, bars and beam.
The Utes are coming off the highest team total in school history, 198.60 in a home meet with BYU on March 19. They've had five of the top 10 all-time school scores this season plus the all-time best vault score of 49.775 on March 19.
While it was a confidence builder, Marsden and Vituj say that's in the past now. "I don't think we have thought that much about it. There's been no discussion," Marsden said. "We try not to be overly concerned with high scores and low scores."
Said Vituj: "That Friday night really showed we have the potential to compete with everyone else in the country. I know people are pleased with how we performed. It was a really fun time.
"But we realize postseason scores will be quite different."
Judges tend to be tighter with their rewards in the postseason, though Vituj wonders if they'll be as stingy in this season of extremely high marks. "Scores have been so inflated, it will be interesting to see if they'll be high (in the regionals)," she said.
High scores won't matter much, though, if the Utes don't open well on beam tonight. "I'm not overly panicked about it because I see the potential," Marsden said. "It comes down to, if we're the team we think we are, and we really are a contender, it doesn't matter because you've got to hit all four events."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com