Utah gymnastics squad finishes on a good note

That "almost magical" bars set in Thursday's team preliminaries and a most impressive comeback on the hardest event to hit under pressure, balance beam, in Friday night's Super Six team finals are the two things University of Utah coach Greg Marsden said he'll remember most about the 2007 NCAA gymnastics championships his team hosted at the Huntsman Center last weekend.

"The way they came back on beam" is maybe the most gratifying thing because that 49.40 score brought the Utes from third place behind Georgia and Florida after three events to take second place for the second straight year in the NCAAs.

For a young team that had a difficult time putting a season together, it was a huge accomplishment, though it was one everyone knew they had in them.

Most of the problems from the regular season — not being able to finish meets, having at least one poor event per meet, counting falls and major errors, not completely getting along — "got resolved in the postseason," Marsden said.

"I'm so happy because a lot of people didn't believe in us," said sophomore Kristina Baskett. "We knew we could go this far; it was just a matter of putting it together. We weren't perfect, but it still was a lot better than what we did in the middle of the season."

"We tried too hard, and we did so many mistakes," said freshman Daria Bijak, who scored a career-high 9.925 on that Thursday bars set that Marsden found magical with five straight stuck landings before senior Nicolle Ford fell on hers, a mistake that didn't count and didn't hurt. "At the end, we practiced really good, and we were like, 'We can do it in practice, so we can do it in the meet,"' said Bijak, one of three Utes from Thursday to qualify for bars finals on Saturday.

Utah, which entered the postseason ranked seventh, had its three best scores of the season in the West Regional (197.325), NCAA team preliminaries on Thursday (197.325) and Friday's Super Six championship (197.25), hit all 24 routines at the regional and didn't count a fall in the NCAA championships.

Junior Ashley Postell's 9.925 beam routine on Friday snatched second place from Florida, which had ranked No. 1 most of the season. She was second (39.60) in the official NCAA all-around championships on Thursday for the second straight year, outscored the entire field in Friday's Super Six (39.65) and had the year's best dismount stick on floor on her triple twist (9.95).

And on Saturday, Postell won her first NCAA individual event championship, taking the beam (9.9375).