Repeat is goal for No. 4 Gators at Saturday’s SEC Championships

Saturday, March 18

Jacksonville, FL

6 p.m.

Florida Gators

Southeastern Conference Championships

The Gators look to defend their Southeastern Conference Championships title this Saturday evening in Jacksonville's Veterans Memorial Arena.

Repeat is goal for No. 4 Gators at Saturday’s SEC Championships

Saturday, March 18, 2017 | Gymnastics

Gators look for SEC title No. 11 in Jacksonville

By: Mary Howard

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Gators look for their second consecutive and 11th overall Southeastern Conference Championships title Saturday. Florida competes in the SEC Championships' Session II, set for Saturday at 6 p.m. ET in the Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla.

The last SEC Championships held at a school site was in Gainesville, Fla., in 2000. Every league championships since has been held on a neutral site. This is the second time the SEC Championships appear in the Veterans Memorial Arena, with Florida winning that title in 2010.

Ticket Info:
2017 SEC Competition Schedule
Saturday, March 18 * Veterans Memorial Arena (Jacksonville, Fla.)

Start Evt	V	UB	BB	FX
2 p.m. ET	Kentucky	Missouri	Auburn	Arkansas
6 p.m. ET	LSU	Florida	Alabama	Georgia

One ticket gains entrance to both sessions. Tickets range in price from $17 - $10 and can be purchased at TicketMaster

How to Follow the Gators:
Each of the 2017 SEC Gymnastics Championship sessions will be televised live.

Session I	Live on ESPNU
Session II	Live on SEC Network

Also airs tape-delayed:

March 20	ESPNU 4 p.m. & 5:30 p.m. ET
March 21	ESPNU 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. ET

Olympic medalists Bart Connor and Kathy Johnson Clarke along with Gator grad Laura Rutledge will call the action.

Live video stream available at SEC Network +

New to this year's coverage is a Team Stream. Follow every Gator routine at:

Florida Gator Video Stream

About the SEC Championships:
With the addition of Missouri to the league in 2013, the format for the SEC Championships moved to two four-team sessions. Teams seeded No. 5-8 (based on March 13 regional qualifying scores) compete in Saturday's opening session at 2 p.m. ET followed by seeds 1-4 at 6 p.m. ET. Scores from the two sessions combine to determine the team and event champions. As the second seed in the evening session, Florida's rotation order will be bars-beam-floor-vault.

Four of the nation's top-10 teams (No. 2 LSU, No. 4 Florida, No. 6 Alabama, No. 8 Georgia) are among the eight-team SEC field. All of the nation's top 10 team totals of 2017 have come from four teams – UCLA, Florida, LSU and Oklahoma. Seven SEC gymnasts are represented eight times among the nation's top 25 all-around totals of 2017.

Florida and Alabama have taken the last eight SEC meet titles, with Florida claiming the 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2016 titles and Alabama taking the 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2015 wins. The Gators edged Alabama by the smallest margin allowed in the sport, 0.025 to take the 2016 title (197.775-197.75) in North Little Rock, Ark.

Florida in the SEC Championships

In the Gators Regular Season Finale vs WVU:
The Gators equaled its fourth-highest total of the season, 197.60, to defeat No. 22 West Virginia (196.10) in front of 5,285 in the regular-season finale held March 10 in the Exactech Arena at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center.

The Gators swept the event titles, with each apparatus win coming with a mark of 9.925 or higher. Rachel Slocum claimed her sixth vault win of season at 9.95. Seven of her nine vault performances of 2017 scored a 9.925 or better. The evening's top uneven bars mark of 9.925 put Amelia Hundley and Alex McMurtry in a tie for the event win. The pair went one-two with collegiate-best marks on the next event, balance beam. McMurtry took her third beam win of 2017 with a 9.95 and Hundley was second at 9.90.

After sitting out the last four floor exercise performances due to an ankle injury, Kennedy Baker returned to take the event win with a near-perfect 9.975. She's scored a 9.925 or better in each of her five floor performances this season.

Freshman Rachel Gowey used a 39.275 to become the fourth different Gator to win an all-around title this season. A Gator has taken the all-around win in nine of the team's 10 regular-season meets.

National Rank:
Florida – Florida is No. 4 in the 10th Road to Nationals poll. The rankings now listed by regional qualifying average (top two road, home and then next two highest totals. The high is discarded, with the total of the remaining scores divided by five to compute RQS).