Utah Utes gymnastics: Trying to take pressure off

SALT LAKE CITY — A Ute gymnastics team that has been feeling the pressure — especially the balance beamers — of being the lowest-ranked Utah team ever may have turned a corner Tuesday in its last hard practice before Saturday's 6 p.m., six-team NCAA North Central Regional meet at its own Huntsman Center.

Utah also suffered another injury, though. Junior Jacq Johnson fell Tuesday after a vault and bruised her tailbone badly enough that she will miss the regional.

Coach Greg Marsden said his 10th-ranked team has been tight, feeling the burden of trying to qualify for the 2010 NCAA championships — April 22-24 at Florida — just a little more than most Ute teams.

In its previous 34 seasons, Utah has never not qualified for nationals.

It is the only team to have qualified for every NCAA championship meet since that governing body took over from the AIAW in 1982.

On Tuesday, Marsden had some straight talk for his team about the meaning of it all, and perhaps it helped.

"We had a great beam workout," he said. "It's a work in progress. I feel like we had kind of a breakthrough (Tuesday). I feel like we're in a good place right now."

Utah's vault (49.35), bars (49.425) and floor (49.40) squads are coming off their season-highs in the last meet of the regular season, but beam — where nerves are most evident — again saw two falls and a 48.85. And that score was that high only because Kyndal Robarts ended it with a career-high 9.925.

Marsden told the beam team: "You guys are just so worried about failing you won't allow yourself to succeed. You're so fearful of making a mistake."

"To me," he said, "it's them trying too hard rather than just relaxing and competing with confidence and competing like they train."

He said he hopes his 35 years of experience counts for something and that he's learned that the sun still comes up the next day, and people get on with their lives no matter how the season ends.

"If we have a good meet, we'll qualify. If we don't, we may not, but it's not as big a deal as everybody's trying to make you think it is," he told them. "It's true. That's what I have learned.

"Whether we win the whole thing, or we don't even go, it's the same thing the next year. We've got to get up and get ready and do it all over again. Some of them will go on to the rest of their lives, and the rest of us will use that as a motivation to move forward."

Some beam routines have been altered in the past two weeks to make people more comfortable.