Red Rocks receive No. 5 seed, afternoon session

SALT LAKE CITY — On Saturday night, Utah's gymnastics team found out that it can, indeed, be good, that it can live up to its glorious past as it had strong showings in all four events at its own regional championships and easily qualified for the April 22-24 2010 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships.

On Monday, there was more good news. The NCAA made the Utes — who went into last week as the nation's No. 10-ranked team — the fifth seed for the national championships at the University of Florida.

By virtue of its seed, Utah gets the afternoon session in the team preliminaries on Thursday, April 22, and that's music to Utah's ears.

Teams in the afternoon session are No. 1 seed UCLA, No. 4 Oklahoma, No. 8 Oregon State, No. 9 LSU and No. 12 Nebraska. Host and second-seeded Florida competes in the evening session with No. 3 Alabama, No. 6 Stanford, No. 7 Arkansas, No. 10 Missouri and No. 11 Michigan. The top three finishers from each session advance to Friday night's Super Six team championships.

"I like the afternoon because, if we qualify on to finals, it gives you more time to recover," said Ute coach Greg Marsden. "You can get back and do your treatments, go out with the team, have a relaxed dinner and get to bed early. If you're in the evening session, by the time you get out of there, it's 10 o'clock or after, and you've got to get your kids fed and get treatments done, and they're so wound up it's hard to settle down and get to sleep, and you've got a much shorter recovery time."

Co-coach Megan Marsden adds that it's good, too, because the host is always in the evening session, when the crowd is loud and partisan. The afternoon session is more relaxed.

"And it's the same rotation," pointed out Greg Marsden, "that worked for us at regionals, so we can't be too upset. I'd much rather end on beam than start on beam."

Utah worried a bit about starting on beam in the regional because beam had been a problem spot the second half of the season. But the Utes came through with an outstanding beam set Saturday, scoring 49.35, the highest event score of the regional for them, and that brought confidence.

"I hope it gives them as a group some confidence that it is OK to approach that event with aggressiveness," said Megan Marsden, the beam coach. "I think some of them were a little too careful (earlier in the season), too 'don't-overdo-things.' They just tried to get up there and carefully do beam, and you can't do that."