2011 NCAA GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS WOLSTEIN CENTER CLEVELAND, OHIO

Transcription

1 2011 NCAA GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS WOLSTEIN CENTER CLEVELAND, OHIO THURSDAY, APRIL 14 Press Conference #1 Florida Nebraska Oregon State Utah Florida Head Coach Rhonda Faehn Coach s opening statement: We are extremely excited to be here. Everything looks beautiful in the arena and we re just thrilled to be here and get the competition underway. We re just proud to be a part of it. On the competitive field in the 2011 NCAA Championships: We appreciate the level of talent across the country and at this competition. Everyone has to bring their A game but that s what makes it exciting. We re not focusing on our entire season -- that s in the past -- but going to focus on the practice and competing our hearts out. All the athletes are very excited. This is going to be unbelievable and were going to put it all out there. Florida Senior Maranda Smith On traveling to Cleveland and preparing for nationals: We haven t had our practice yet, but traveling here was fun. It s a great group of girls and coaching staff to be around so every time we travel we have a lot of fun and laughter along the way. We had an early morning yesterday so last night we had a team meeting and went to bed early to rest and prepare mentally and physically for today. We re just honored and excited to be here with the other 11 teams and ready to just have a great ending to a fantastic season. Nebraska Head Coach Dan Kendig Coach s opening statement: We re excited to be here. The girls are so excited to be here, too. Gymnastics is getting tougher and tougher and to be one of the 12 teams...we re very honored. Nebraska Senior Erin Davis On being in Cleveland and preparing for the championships: I m excited to get into the gym and practice. I ve never been to Cleveland so it s been a good experience here. The weather has been nice so it s been fun with all the team and everything.

2 Oregon State Head Coach Tanya Chaplin Coach s opening statement: We are so honored to be here. Anything can happen at any given night and were so honored to be here and looking forward to carrying the momentum into the championships. Oregon State Junior Leslie Mak On traveling to Cleveland and the experience so far: We haven t had our practice yet, but the fact that we are here is an honor and we re all just really excited to touch the equipment and get a feel for the arena. We have such an exciting time as a team when we re together so traveling is fun and being here is fun. The most stressful part of leading up to nationals is the practices and finishing your homework before you get here and things like that. Now that we re here, we re just really excited and this is the part where we take a deep breath and do what we ve been practicing for all year. Utah Head Coach Megan Marsden Coach s opening statement: I think for our team and how young we are this is their icing on the cake. Regionals were difficult to get through and our team is looking forward to enjoying every moment at the national championships. Utah Junior Stephanie McAllister On being in Cleveland for the championships: We haven t had our practice yet, we are about to do that after the press conference, but we had two flights yesterday and traveled all day. We had a good team meeting and meal when we got here yesterday. Our team really is a fun team to be with and even just travelling through the airport there s some neat, funny things happen. We still have to practice yet, but so far we ve had a good time together.

3 2011 NCAA GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS WOLSTEIN CENTER CLEVELAND, OHIO THURSDAY, APRIL 14 Press Conference #2 Alabama Illinois Kent State UCLA Alabama Head Coach Sarah Patterson I would just like to say thank you to Kent State for hosting the championship. Coming to the NCAA Championships, it never gets old. Our competitors here at this meet are the best in the country. They have weathered adversity, had great seasons and have had the opportunity to either return or come to the championship for the first time. It is a feeling you never forget. It has been an amazing team from an amazing young, talented group of athletes. More importantly, they may have enjoyed this journey thus far and we hope to enjoy it further in the next few days. On what the mood of the team is like after one day of practice: I think exactly what we ve done at the regional and the SEC s and the adjustment of trying to get used to the surroundings, the setting, the equipment. I think the ladies do a good job of that. We always tell them that they don t have to be perfect on this day. It is an opportunity to get comfortable so I hope that after this, we ll be good to go tomorrow. On the venue and whether an underdog can win the championship: I think if you watch women s gymnastics right now and what went on in the last 2-3 weeks leading up to Cleveland, you ll see that any team here has the opportunity to advance to the second night. I don t think that anyone takes for granted that they are automatically going to advance to the Super Six. Then, I think that if you are on the floor for the last night, any team has the opportunity to win the national championship because we don t seed ahead, we don t random draw and see what happens. We really believe that our sport, with the parity that we have this year and the last couple of years, I truly believe that you will see in the future, if not this year, a team come up and make a run. I just think that is how far the sport has come. Alabama Senior Kayla Hoffman On advancing to the Championship this year and how the team is holding up: I think that we are doing great and we know that it is such an honor and privilege to be here, embrace it, have fun and not worry abut the outcome and little things. Not sweating the small stuff, just having fun on the team and knowing that we have only so many moments and memories left with this team. We are all just trying to enjoy it.

4 Illinois Head Coach Kim Landrus I d like to thank Kent State and Cleveland State for hosting the championship. Illinois is very excited to be here. At the start of the season, our motto was One Step At A Time and I think that in every meet, we didn t get ahead of ourselves. We have a core group of returning leaders who were here (NCAA Championships) in 2009, are excited to be back and are showing our young athletes what it is all about. We are excited to compete tomorrow with 11 other great teams from around the country. On the venue and whether an underdog can win the championship: After watching what happened at the regional championship and how close so many teams were at all six regional championships, I really think that tomorrow s competition will lend itself to whomever is on that day. It comes down to the real test of who steps up here and there really a team is going to have to be on. Certainly there are several great teams that have advanced to the Super Six every year but I really think that nobody can take anything for granted and the best teams that show up tomorrow night will be in the Super Six. Kent State Head Coach Brice Biggin Obviously, we are thrilled to be here. It has been a dream come true. It is a big step for us and our entire program to come to the national championships and how special it is for all of these athletes. Being a co-host of this, we obviously talked to our student-athletes about it at the beginning of the year and how important it was and we wanted to promote the sport of gymnastics. We also talked a lot about the possibilities of what we could do about possibly making history at Kent State for our team qualifying for the first time. We ve got a great group of kids, they have worked hard all season long. We ve got great senior leadership. The young lady up here with me (Christina Lenny) has done a phenomenal job of leading the team and really not letting things get to them a whole lot. We had a very consistent season, we worked well together as a team and we are really looking forward to the opportunity to compete with the best teams in the country. We are proud to be here. On whether it is an advantage to have the championships in Cleveland? Obviously, this is 50 minutes down the road for us. We were able to have a meet here earlier in the season where we got familiar with the facility. We were able to roll out of bed this morning and leave the university at 9:30 this morning so it has been a real easy day. It has been a very easy trip. We feel like we are going to have a great crowd here. Making it for the first time, we couldn t have asked for a better scenario as far as our kids being a little more comfortable and having a nice crowd so I think those things are really going to work to our advantage.

5 Kent State Senior Christina Lenny On advancing the sport in the State of Ohio: It is really nice for us, being so close to home. We grew up in Cleveland. Our support system, our family and friends, are able to come. It is also a good opportunity for us to be at nationals and be able to compete with some of the best teams in the country. We couldn t ask for anything more. UCLA Head Coach Valorie Kondos Field I want to thank Cleveland State and Kent State for hosting and congratulate Kent State for qualifying. We were excited to see that happen. It is great to be back because the thing that we, as college coaches are doing very well, is to find ways to create parity around the country. It is getting harder and harder every year to get here. Where you used to be able to take it easy a bit on the first day of competition and know that you were going to be able to save some athletes for the Super Six, that is not the case now. In fact, if you move down the ranks to the regionals, which is the first stage of the national championships, they have gotten extremely exciting. I think our sport is definitely going in the right direction. As far as our program, this year we have had a lot of ups and downs. I d like to say that we ve had a nice easy road, but we have not. It has been tumultuous at times, but the fun part for me as a coach has been to help keep them (the Bruins) on the path and keep them prepared to be able to contend again for the championship title. I can honestly say that despite all of the downs that we have had this year, we have never had a low. The team never got low and for those of us who have been coaching as long as we ve had, you can really appreciate that when you don t have to dig them back up. So that s been a pleasure. I thrilled to have Brittani McCullough up here, she is our fifth-year senior. If you don t know her story, go online and look it up because it is a great story and I couldn t be more proud to have her up here. On the venue and whether an underdog can win the championship: I get so excited when I think about the teams are here. I really think that it is the year that a team can come up and take it away from the four teams that have won the championship in the past. If you know the history of those teams... you have a team that has been ranked number one all year and they didn t have a great regional and they ve got to be hungry. I see Jay Clark (Georgia coach) in the back and those Bulldogs are ready to go. They want it, they want it bad. Arkansas tends to be the spoilers of the country. Don t ever, ever let your guard down when Arkansas is in the house because they are going to take it (the title) away from you. The same thing for all of us up here. This is an exciting, very exciting time for collegiate gymnastics. It is an exciting championship, it is exciting to be in this venue. When you are at home, or you compete at home, it has a tendency to either spark your team or it can get you too tight. If you are looking at a kind of neutral venue, this is a neutral venue, we are all as excited for Kent State to be here as we are for ourselves to be here. For the Bruins, this will not only be our 7th national championship (jn gymnastics) but our 107th championship (overall) for UCLA so there are a whole lot of exciting things going on. It is going to be a great weekend.

6 On what is like to enter the championship as the defending champion? The team is very different from last year. We aren t coming in as the defending national champions, we are coming in as a brand new team. All that noise about being defending national champ is great for the media and the fans, but I feel that as a coach, you don t bring that into it. We are a totally different team. This team is extremely different from any team that I have been a part of in my 29 years at UCLA. The biggest thing that hit us was when Vanessa Zamarripa went down with her Achilles in November. We knew that we had four spots that we needed to fill. Those were the nines and a guaranteed 10 that we could count on. That s what has really been exciting for us, to see where our depth is, where our weaknesses are and those weaknesses showed up fast. But it was good for us to work on our weaknesses and get to where we ve gotten this season. Defending national champs is great for everybody else to talk about, but we don t talk about it.

7 2011 NCAA GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS WOLSTEIN CENTER CLEVELAND, OHIO THURSDAY, APRIL 14 Press Conference #3 Arkansas Georgia Michigan Oklahoma Arkansas Head Coach Mark Cook Opening statements: First of all, we are very honored to be at the National Championships. It s a long season for all the teams that fight to get here. It s been a trying year and we have a lot of new kids on the team this year, but we have a lot of fighters, a lot of god spirits. We have girls that are happy to be here and that are exited for the competition. On getting to see the arena and practice this morning: They have to adapt and that s the thing. The arena is great; great seating; the podium is awesome; equipment is great. So it s a matter of just adapting to the environment and getting out there and getting a feel for it. We did a good job with that. Every place you go, there s little subtleties as far as the equipment so you just have to adapt to those things and feel them out and be confident that you have taken care of your training and preparation and technique. I think it was great and we re prepared and ready to go. Arkansas Junior Jaime Pisani On how the team has prepared all season to get to this point: We have a lot of new girls this year. We have five new people on our team after losing three amazing seniors last year so it s been a whole different team for us. Throughout preseason, everyone has really prepared well, they ve stayed focused, they re really aggressive girls and I think they ve had a great season all year and they re doing great for this team and have helped so much with the success of this team and they re all just great fighters and I think they re just ready to get after it this weekend. We re excited for the competition and we re prepared and ready. Georgia Head Coach Jay Clark Opening Statements: We are really excited to be here, we worked hard and we are excited to be here. Obviously, I am going to beat you to the punch, we did not make it last year and to be back is a good feeling. It was a great feeling to finish off the regional the way we did very strong and be able to train a little more freely and be more confident as a result of going back to the National Championship. Like so many other teams before, we have had a season that has been up and down, we have had our share of injuries and setbacks, but this team has been a resilient bunch. If I had to mention one thing about this crew, its that they are a bunch of fighters and are just exited to be here and compete for another National Championship.

8 On practicing in the arena today: This arena is fantastic. It s the right size for this event. It appears to be something that will feel full based upon what we know about ticket sales and everything. I think it s a really good venue. I haven t been to Cleveland but one other time and not knowing what to expect, I ve been pleasantly surprised. Our team came in today and did exactly what we asked them to do. No distractions was sort of the theme and they did it. We did exactly what we like to do on the day before a championship competition and I was really pleased with the fact that we really didn t have to make many adjustments. They just went up there and did their gymnastics and that was nice to see because we ve had our moments this year where that hasn t always been the case. Georgia Senior Cassidy McComb On how the team has been able to advance to national: This team has fought a lot of adversity, ups and downs, injuries here and there, even happening right at meets in warm-ups. We ve had a lot of girls who have been able to step right in and do the job for us. It s been about taking one meet at a time, taking one skill at a time and really just staying calm and that s pretty much what we ve done to get where we are. Michigan Head Coach Bev Plocki Opening Statements: The University of Michigan is very happy and exited to be here. We have a team that is really split between a lot of leadership and a lot of freshmen, five seniors and seven freshmen, just three sophomores, but we have definitely had a lot of leadership from our senior class. Our season has been one that started off slow, we had some injuries in the fall. We slowly got those people back and have slowly gotten better as the season went on, and we feel like we are peaking at the right time. Our best three meets have been the last three meets of the season. We are really hoping that we can carry that confidence into the championship, but we are really exited to be here. So far everything has been great and we look forward to the championship. On getting to see the arena and practice this morning: I would echo what both of the coaches have said so far, I think today is about getting a feel for the equipment, a feel for the podium, the atmosphere. I think the facility looks fantastic. Once we got the right beam up on the podium, our team performed great. We try not to do a whole lot before a championship, but we wanted to get a feel for the equipment, a feel for the podium, and for the atmosphere. Which I thought was great, so I think our team did a great job getting ready, they feel good about the competition and tomorrow, we are ready to go. Michigan Senior Kylee Botterman On how the team is preparing for nationals with such a young team: We have seven freshmen this year, so it was a little bit of a change, but the girls right from preseason knew what they were getting into. They have been awesome all season for us. They ve really stepped up and we have some great leaders from the freshmen right now. We ve been going to bed earlier and getting up earlier because we start warm-ups tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. so that s something we re doing to get ready for tomorrow.

9 Oklahoma Head Coach K.J. Kindler Obviously we are exited to be here as well as everyone up here as already said. We lost five seniors last year in our runner-up performance, which was a wonderful year for us, so this is an entirely different team this year. We have 18 of our 24 teams competed by freshmen and sophomores, and so we are very young. I was extremely exited to see how they performed at regionals, considering we are so young, because I was not sure how they would respond to that kind of pressure. We were at home, so that was a benefit. But having had a great regular season, its hard to know how they will compete when the pressure is really on. So that was exiting to see, I hope we can continue to have fun and stay loose and let it roll off their backs tomorrow night. There is a lot of pressure to be here until the last night, its a goal of every single person at this table and of everyone in the tournament. So that is how our season went. On getting to see the arena and practice this morning: The venue is great, I really like it. The fans are going to get a first class experience. It seems like they are really close to the action, and I think they are really going to like that. I would say our team was tight today, we were a little bit tight, and not as loose as I would like to see them. I need them to relax a lot more tomorrow. Oklahoma Sophomore Natasha Kelley On how the team has been preparing for the championships: Kind of like K.J. (head coach K.J. Kindler) said, we also lost a lot of seniors and we had a lot of freshmen come in that really had to step-up for us and have done a great job. We also have a lot of younger people on our team that really stepped up into that leadership role this year and I think that s something that has really helped us and has helped us become a strong team. We had a great preseason and it s been a great season so far. We are really excited for this opportunity that we have.