Utah gymnasts back home after stellar showing

It's back to reality today for the University of Utah gymnasts.

They finally hit a 24-for-24 meet for the first time all season on Saturday in Berkeley, Calif., to win the NCAA West Regional and qualify for the April 26-28 2007 NCAA Championships in their own Huntsman Center.

But after the euphoria and relief they felt for putting nearly everything together — Utah's season-high of 197.325 tied No. 1-ranked Florida for the nation's best region score, and Ashley Postell's 39.675 would have won the national all-around, if there had been such a thing — today is decision time.

The Utes will come together in the practice gym today, said coach Greg Marsden, and make determinations on how they'll handle the next dozen days.

They are leaning toward staying in the hotel with other teams at least part of the time during nationals, and they have to figure out how best to handle things like the academic part of their lives.

Because nationals are a week later this year than usual, Utah's final exams begin on Super Six Friday, the day the national team championship is decided, and several of the gymnasts have academic projects due that week as well. "We've got to figure out how we're going to get everything done," Marsden said.

The team will also discuss how to keep the recent upturn going. Including Saturday's regional, the Utes have had the good karma flowing for seven straight workouts/competitions.

"We just need to keep working on it," said senior captain Nicolle Ford. "We can't achieve this and bring our heads way up there. We have to stay level-headed and realize that it's still anybody's game, we're still not there yet."

"As exciting as it is, the significance is that we got it done, and it appears we got it done at the beginning of the right time, and now we just have to maintain that for a couple more weeks," added Marsden.

For him, it was rewarding that after a season of inconsistency, "The team listened to me (two weeks ago when he became angry over a lackluster practice) and made a commitment to try to come in every day as a group with a good, positive attitude and get something accomplished in a consistent manner.

"Either it was a big coincidence or it paid off," Marsden said Sunday.

Utah will compete in the evening rotation on Thursday, April 26, in team preliminaries. The host team always goes at night to help attendance.