Late start just what SUU needed

No one would blame Southern Utah's gymnastics team if it just relaxed and called this a rebuilding year.

The T-Birds, who have their first meet of the 2006 season tonight at 6 (MST) at Oklahoma, have endured a lot since their appearance at the 2005 NCAA North Central Regional.

Graduation robbed them of all-arounder Carly Geronimo, one of the best in school history, as well as two-event standouts Molly Bauer and Jessiann Andrus, and then junior vault star Sabrina Gourley left school at the holiday break to be with her husband, who is on leave from duty in Iraq and stationed in Georgia.

The recruiting budget exhausted itself early, and some of the athletes SUU was after went elsewhere, leaving the T-Birds with just two true freshmen, Kellie Dangerfield of Salt Lake City and Katie Hicks of Prescott, Ariz.

Additionally, coach Scott Bauman, starting his 14th season at SUU, had to let his assistants do much of the preseason work following surgery to essentially rebuild his neck. Three cervical discs were removed and cadaver parts inserted, held together with eight plates and 32 screws. It's the result of years of catching and spotting gymnasts, he said, and not from a particular injury.

"I'm doing great," Bauman said. "I'm actually moving better than I was before. I feel great."

The same can be said for his team, which is light on experience but is turning out to be, "honestly, the easiest team I've ever coached."

He said some of the older athletes asked him why he hadn't been as hard on them as in the past, and he told them he hadn't needed to be until last week, when the blahs of the holiday break and shock of losing Gourley set in.

For that reason, Bauman is glad SUU is starting the season this late, two weeks after most schools. "We're ready now," he said. "They've done a fantastic job working their hearts out. It's weird, with all those chips stacked against us . . . but it's just what's happened.

"Sometimes these turn out to be the funner years. They really do deserve it this year."

Junior all-arounder Leah Sakhitab made it to the 2005 NCAA Championships, just the second T-Bird to ever do so. Seniors Sheena Shaw and Rachel Tanner are also top all-arounders for a team that will host powerful Michigan on Feb. 24 to open a home-and-home series with the Wolverines, ranked second in the country this week. "Ridiculously talented," Bauman said of UM.