No. 3 Florida Gymnastics Team Ties for Second at Southeastern Conference Championships – Misses Title by Slight Margin

Saturday, March 29

Duluth, GA

4:00 p.m.

Florida Gators

Southeastern Conference Championships

No. 3 Florida Gymnastics Team Ties for Second at Southeastern Conference Championships – Misses Title by Slight Margin

Saturday, March 29, 2008 | Gymnastics

By: Mary Howard

DULUTH, Ga. – The slenderest of margins kept the No. 3 Florida gymnastics team (12-3-1, 4-2 SEC) from repeating as champions at the 28^th annual Southeastern Conference Championships, held Saturday afternoon in front of a meet record crowd of 9,022 at the Gwinnett Center.

Florida tied for second with No. 6 Alabama at 197.325, while No. 1 Georgia took its 16^th SEC title at 197.35. The margin of victory, 0.025, is the smallest in the 28-year history of the event. The other team results Saturday included No. 5 LSU (196.50), No. 13 Auburn (196.10), No. 11 Arkansas (194.65) and No. 20 Kentucky (194.025).

Heading into the seventh and final rotation, Florida needed a 49.225 on the balance beam to pass the GymDogs, who completed their fourth event in the previous rotation. The Gators also needed to score well as Alabama was moving to its strongest event, vault. To reach that total, the Gators would need a solid beam result. But small deductions and a fall by the final competitor left the Gators just a fraction away from their seventh SEC title.

Although the meet's ending result all seemed focused on the final event, UF Head Coach Rhonda Faehn thought the Gators set the groundwork for this pressure situation from their first event.

"I was a little bit disappointed in our floor at the beginning of the meet. We really needed to gain ground on floor and vault because typically they are our strongest events. When we didn't score up to our potential on floor, we were left in a severe pressure situation at the very end," Faehn said. "We were disappointed in every tenth we gave away in the first event that would have allowed us a bit of cushioning."

The Gators' opening event score of 49.375 on floor was hurt by some control problems on landings. Florida matched that total on its next event, vault. On bars, Florida matched its second-highest total of the season (49.40) for the second consecutive competition. The Gators' beam total of 49.175 just missed the needed tally.

"We are happy with they way they rallied – especially on bars. After Ashley Reed fell, for the rest of them to respond aggressively with hit routines was huge. Going into beam, we knew we just needed to hit solid routines, really good routines. But unfortunately, we had just a few small mistakes and our last gymnast, Amanda (Castillo) fell, so that hurt obviously," Faehn said. "All the little things that we made mistakes on really added up for us tonight."

Faehn said the slight margin between first and second should help this team as they now look forward to NCAA Championship competition.

"This result will just fuel this team. It makes them see that we can't make mistakes like we did because it is extremely close," Faehn said. "But it should motivate our athletes to not let this happen again and come back even stronger for NCAAs."

Four different Gators earned a share of the four apparatus titles Saturday, marking the first time a Florida gymnast has won each of the four SEC event titles since 1985. Three different Florida gymnasts used marks of 9.95 to win a share of their event titles. Senior Ashley Reed is the first Gator since 1989 to win the vault, while sophomore Melanie Sinclair is the first to win uneven bars since 1995. Sophomore Amanda Castillo won her second consecutive SEC floor title Saturday, becoming the first Gator to repeat as floor champion since Melissa Miller won the 1988 and 1989 titles. Junior Corey Hartung also claimed a share of the balance beam title at 9.90 - the first for UF since 1999.

This is Florida's second loss to Georgia this season by 0.025, with the first coming in the Jan. 18 dual meet held in Gainesville. Sinclair admitted that it is a difficult result to come to terms with, but it should help the team in their post-season preparations.

"It is a little frustrating, but at the same time it is going to make you work that much harder in the gym. It is going to make you push that much harder and give you confidence that you missed it by just that much," Sinclair said. "There no point in stopping now – we were just that close. It is going to push us that much harder."

In the post-season awards ceremony, sophomore Rebekah Zaiser was named the SEC Scholar-Athlete – a first for the Gator gymnastics program. Zaiser owns a 3.95 GPA in biology and is part of UF's Honors Program. She wants to attend medical school.
Next up, the Gators await Monday's announcement by the NCAA by 5 p.m. (ET) of team assignments for the six NCAA Regional sites. Florida plays host to the NCAA Southeast Region Championships on April 12 in the Stephen C. O'Connell Center. The top two teams at each of the six sites will advance to the NCAA Championships, set for April 24-26 in Athens, Ga.

Final Team Standings
No. 3 Florida at Southeastern Conference Championships – March 29, 2008 – Gwinnett Center (9,022)
	Team	Vault	Bars	Beam	Floor	Total
1.	Georgia	49.225	49.500	49.300	49.325	197.350
2.	Florida	49.375	49.400	49.175	49.375	197.325
	Alabama	49.450	49.125	49.350	49.400	197.325
4.	LSU	49.350	48.975	48.900	49.275	196.500
5.	Auburn	49.025	49.050	49.000	49.025	196.100
6.	Arkansas	48.625	47.950	49.025	49.050	194.650
7.	Kentucky	48.525	48.500	48.850	48.150	194.025