Gymnasts miss mark at Regionals
Published April 17, 2007
Although the women's gymnastics team finished in third place at the NCAA West Regional on Saturday night in Berkeley, Calif., only the top two teams from each region advanced to national competition.
"I think we went out there in the third position," coach Rob Drass said. "We finished in the third position, and the right two teams kind of advanced."
Those two teams are No. 6 Nebraska and No. 7 Utah. The Tigers were the third seed in the region and were ranked No. 18 in the country. The team scored a 194.3 on the night, a low score compared to what it had been scoring recently. Drass said the low score was due in part to a tighter judging crew than usual.
Another problem for the Tigers was that both junior Nikki Bowman and senior Amanda Pezzullo fell on the beam. Pezzullo's fall was surprising as she had not fallen on beam all season, and Drass said she is one of his most consistent gymnasts.
"That's just the event," Drass said. "That happens to everybody. I don't think we had a beam problem or anything like that. I think we had an atypical fall from Amanda Pezzullo. I don't think she fell for two or three years straight, so sooner or later, you're playing that numbers game, someone's going to get caught there."
Despite counting the fall, Drass doesn't attribute the beam performance for the loss.
"That didn't really change our position," Drass said. "If we would have hit beam, I'm not sure we would have been able to qualify for the nationals. The other two teams just had a great meet."
Despite the team's shortcoming, sophomore Adrianne Perry qualified for national competition as an all-around competitor with a score of 39.3.
"I thought she had a great performance," Drass said. "She did an outstanding job. We're very happy to be going back to the NCAA Championships with her. I think she has a great shot to be an All-American on a number of events or in the all-around. So we're just excited to be there and go back and see what we can do."
The third-place finish at regionals was the Tigers' third straight. Drass said in order for his team to get to the next level, it will have to get past some pre-conceived notions.
"Gymnastics is somewhat of a political sport," he said. "You have pre-conceptions before you go in as to who's going to win, what's going to happen and whether that's something that should or shouldn't happen. It's just kind of part of our sport. I think what we've done over the last couple years is slowly build up our status as one of those teams that does well at the championships and throughout the season."
Drass said this problem of politics affects both athletes and judges.
"The judges try to be as impartial as they can," he said. "But I think that the meets would be very interesting if everybody put on the same color leotard and you didn't know who competed for who and maybe not in the same order. You might see some different results come out. But that's just our sport."