Utah coach Greg Marsden can't remember when his gymnastics team started the season as healthy as it is now. Sprained ankles from fall practices are healed, Katie Kivisto's surgically repaired elbow is cooperating, Nina Kim's "tweaked back" felt better Thursday, the team made it through the last practice of the week with no injuries and Marsden can choose his lineup for tonight by gymnastics, not health.
His Georgia counterpart, Suzanne Yoculan, says she has the opposite.
The coach of the top-ranked, three-time defending NCAA-champion Gym Dogs — who help the third-ranked Utes open the 2008 slate tonight at 7 in the Huntsman Center in a matchup of 2007 NCAA champion and runner-up — has a long list of ailments.
"We typically open really strong, and this would probably be the first time in almost 10 years that that's not the case. We will not be opening strong at all," Yoculan said by telephone.
In theory, Georgia returns every routine from last April's 2007 championship that was won on this same Huntsman Center floor, but Yoculan said many of those routines will be altered.
"Six of the key players at the championships last year for us had surgery in the summer, and we got a really late start, and because of that, we're just not routine-ready," said Yoculan. Courtney (Kupets, two-time NCAA all-around champion), Tiffany Tolnay and Katie Heenan (2007 SEC gymnast of the year) didn't start training until November, Yoculan said.
Marcia Newby had a rod surgically placed into a leg last summer. Grace Taylor sprained an ankle at last Saturday's Sneak-a-Peek team preview, Paige Burns had appendicitis on New Year's Eve, Kupets woke up with fluid on her surgically repaired knee Sunday after the Sneak-a-Peek, Tolnay was in the infirmary Monday getting IVs because she'd been throwing up so much.
Marsden's not buying much of it after watching video of the Sneak-a-Peek. The Gym Dogs looked plenty good to him and have tremendous depth, he said.
"Ask Greg if he'll lend us a gymnast for Friday night," said Yoculan. "I'm not sandbagging in any way.
"Oh, we'll be decent," she said. "Hopefully we won't make a lot of mistakes, but we'll be watered down. We're taking out middle passes.
"We're not ready, I don't know what else to say, and we can't afford another injury, and I'm not taking any chances. I'm known to be a risk-taker," Yoculan said. "People know I will go for it, I will say it, we will back it up. But we just don't have the physical stamina or depth or health to go for it."
The Gym Dogs have overcome adversity before, so don't count them down. They were minus two all-arounders for the '07 championships, and in 2005 at Auburn, they had such a poor regional meet that they qualified last in the nationals field, then won the title.
Four who were freshmen on that '05 team that Yoculan said then was her favorite are seniors now: Heenan, Nikki Childs, Megan Dowlen and Audrey Bowers. "They've been the leaders of our team, and they've been instrumental in the makeup of our team, the type of girls that we have on our team," Yoculan said, and this is again — or still — one of her favorite bunches.
"We've been living the high life for, this will be our fourth year. No drama, no problems, just great kids that love gymnastics, love competing, very coachable. Everyone gets along," Yoculan said. "It's not fake. It's not made up. It's a pleasure. They're the kind of team that make you want to coach forever."
Even if the next week or so may be a little rough, injury-wise.
Georgia will at least look like it did last April in one way. It will be wearing the same leotards it did when it won the '07 title. It's a Georgia tradition to wear title-winning outfits to open the next season, Yoculan said, and not a way to rub it in Utah's faces that Georgia beat out the Utes, and Kupets beat Utah's Ashley Postell, who was second in the all-around, on Utah's own floor.
Utah was also runner-up to Georgia in 2006 at Oregon State.
Georgia has eight national titles to Utah's 10, though Utah hasn't won since 1995 — at Georgia.
The NCAAs return to Georgia April 24-26.
Last season started poorly for the Utes in part because they were overly worried about hosting the NCAAs, knowing how in 1999 when the NCAAs were at the Huntsman Center, Utah finished seventh and didn't qualify to be on the floor for the Super Six championships night, about as embarrassing as it's ever gotten for the Utes.
Yoculan said she's noted nothing similar from her team this year.
"I'm not feeling like that's happening at all. I haven't had anyone express to me a concern whether we'll qualify," she said. "That's always lurking out there, but we're sort of used to the target being on our back. It's been there for a while.
"With us, it's more, 'Can we win again? Can we win four in a row?' That seems to be more the question in terms of our community and our fans."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com