'06 team enjoyed wild ride

One of the strangest years in 31 seasons of Ute gymnastics was also uplifting and provided plenty of hope for 2007, when Utah hosts the NCAA championships for the first time since 1999 and when it will have its largest-ever freshman class — six — which collectively is considered among the nation's best classes.

"Every year is a little different, and this one was certainly unique," said coach Greg Marsden of a team that may not have reached its full potential because of a habit of messing up early, then roaring back, if not to win then at least to survive.

The postseason truly told the story of these Utes — they advanced to the national championships despite having the 11th-best regional score of the 12 teams that made it to Corvalis, Ore.

They advanced to last Friday's Super Six NCAA team championships with the sixth-best qualifying score in Thursday's preliminaries.

After a poor opening on Friday — their 48.95 on bars was 19th of the 24 event totals in the Super Six — they began to crank it, led by sophomore Ashley Postell, who finished second in the NCAA all-around championships on Thursday and had back-to-back 39.525s in the team competitions.

The Utes thought they'd moved up to third, only to take second — exactly where they'd been ranked much of the year — when Alabama had beam falls in the final rotation while Utah was on a bye.

"While we didn't win it, we went up another notch," Marsden noted. Utah was third in 2005.

In individual-event finals on Saturday, freshman Kristina Baskett tied Georgia Olympian Courtney Kupets for the NCAA bars championship, an event that had often frightened Baskett into inconsistency before she reached college.

Throughout the season the Utes won 11 meets, lost by .025 at home to powerful two-time NCAA champion Georgia and lost at Florida when the Gators had their best meet of the season.

But they challenged themselves in just about every meet, especially on the road. They counted falls in every road meet up until Florida (March 17), yet they won every one of those meets in which they counted falls because Nina Kim, Nicolle Ford or Gritt Hofmann was able to right things and keep the situation from escalating.

If there weren't falls, there were issues getting used to the new code of points — it changes after each Olympics — from technicalities to judges' individual interpretations and preferences.