Utah Utes gymnastics: Endure a 'roller coaster' year

The two days of team competition at the 2010 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships two weekends ago pretty well summed up what the 2010 season was like in general for the University of Utah, said coach Greg Marsden.

"Thursday (team preliminaries) was great, and then Friday (Super Six championships) was a bit disappointing because we missed an event, we missed beam," said the Ute coach, whose 35th year at the school concluded with his team's sixth-place finish due to two falls on beam in Utah's second event of the day.

The day before, the Utes had put together one of their best meets of the season to qualify for the Super Six. And the meet before that, the regional in Salt Lake City, they had probably their other best meet of the season to qualify for the NCAA field when many thought they might be staying home for the first time in the program's existence.

"It was a roller coaster," Marsden said of the 2010 season. "There were some great moments, and there were some disappointing moments.

"We finished it off pretty strong.

"I know Georgia would trade places with us," he added, thinking of the Gym Dogs, who had swept the previous five NCAA championships but did not qualify for nationals this season for the first time since 1983.

"I am happy that we seemed to get some results down the stretch," said Megan Marsden, who just finished her first season as the program's co-head coach with her husband, "and a couple of our best competitions of the year happened in the postseason, which is the time that you want to be at your best."

She added that, "It's a little more fun if it can happen a little more often than it did for us this year along the way."

Megan has been a Ute assistant since the mid-1980s and said not much changed when she was made co-head coach. She was able to officially sign scoresheets after meets and take pressure off her husband in some ways, like doing more media interviews, but her coaching duties stayed about the same, she said.

She noticed partway through the season that one other thing had changed — she now actually has a coaching record.

"I didn't start out with a big bang, in terms of record," she joked.

Utah finished 15-4 in the regular season with a season-high score of 196.975 and the fifth seed for nationals.