Friday, April 15, 2011
NCAA Prelims Videos
The All-Around Champion
It was one dramatic day.
Kayla Hoffman
When Shayla was announced, she waved both arms like she was Oprah Winfrey in Australia. Then, it was time for one of the worst meets of her career.
Trish Wilson's glorious bar routine after 4 ACL Tears
Nicole Ellis on Bars
Elizabeth Mahlich
Ashanee's Overscore Bars
Kat Ding's bizarre miss on vault
Alicia Goodwin (who also should've done beam)
Macko's bars
The beautiful Alaina Johnson
Miss Val implores us to trust our cues
An interview with Rhonda Faehn
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Kinda bummed. I think Kayla Hoffman is lovely and would have liked to see her win.
ReplyDeleteFor Georgia and Florida there are lesons to be learned here. Georgia-dump Worley! She's done and embarassing herself and the program. Tanella can pack it up too. What horrible recruits. Carrying their dead weight will be toxic for years to come. If Jay doesn't drop them, he needs to go stat.
ReplyDeleteFor Florida, it's tough, but this is such a young team and they will be amazing next year again. Note to Rhonda, all you needed to do was find a line-up that would stay on the beam. Why take off Goodwin, who had had a few shaky routines, but stayed on all season?
You can't blame Worley's piss poor performance solely on her. Jay's coaching is clearly a major culprit. Given that he has failed to get that team together for two years, Ithink Admin should seriously consider firing him. He is no head coach. He doesn't know how to get his athletes to execute, which is clutch in any NCAA sport. If he was a football or basketball coach, he would have been fired last night. He has brought shame to the UGA gymnastics program. Sacrifice him so they can be great once more. Please.
ReplyDeleteWow- There are a TON of Jay Clark haters out there right now. Taking a program over from the coach who basically built women's college gymnastics is a VERY tough thing to do. Suzanne knew that the talent level at GA would drop tremendously when she lost Kupets and Tolnay, why do you think she picked that year to retire?? No program can stay on top forever, and GA would still have had some struggles last year had Suzanne still been there. They have had to deal with a lot of injuries, and don't have the depth to rest their better performers. I think they can come around if Jay can do a better job recruiting. He needs to be looking at strong level 10's. Losing Bridget Sloan to the Gators is a HUGE blow. Notice no one is calling for Rhonda Faehn's job and her team failed to qualify too- not to mention they have 3 times the talent that GA does right now. Suzanne even said in her interview that the parity in gymnastics is crazy right now. The sport is changing, and I think it is going to be hard for anyone to have the dynasty like Georgia did in today's world of NCAA gymnastics. There are just too many great kids out there!!
ReplyDeleteThis year is lighter on talent in the NCAA. It is reflective of the elite talent being much weaker in the 2005-2008 quad than it was during the amazingly deep 2001-2004 quad.
ReplyDeleteThere was more talent out there when Georgia won five in a row---they just had a ton of it.
Florida has some very talented girls and some average girls. Starting on beam doomed them from the start.
I guarantee Jay Clark's contract and both Worley's and Tanella's scholarships are under review. As even Suzanne said in her interview during the Athens regional meet, they were recruited to get 9.9s and they need to start doing that.
ReplyDeleteWhile UGA is not talented as they were during the 5 year run, this notion that they didn't have the talent to compete last year or this year is just not true. Last year, UGA had a roster of McCool, Taylor, Newby, Ding, Nuccio, McComb, Mauro, Worley, Tanella, and Couch. That team had several routines with 9.9 potential everywhere except vault, and they SHOULD have challenged for the title.
ReplyDeleteThis year the team is weaker, but talent-wise on paper, they're similar to pretty much everyone except UCLA and UF. This team had the talent to make the Super Six, but they just didn't have the competitor fire. UGA better figure something out with that sophomore class because out of 4 gymnasts, only one is performing the way she needs to be, and unfortunately, the 2 with the potential to score 9.9s are headcases.
Is it normal for programs to just get rid of athletes who aren't performing well? It would be great if UGA could get rid of Worley, Tanella, and Brazeal- but if these three are purged from the team, I wonder what it would do to team morale. These girls are close friends and teammates...I ask all this as a fan who doesn't know how things work when a team has athletes who are not meeting expectations.
ReplyDeleteNice to know that Alabama apparently has THREE gymnasts that could have won the All Around. I was so busy watching Kayla and Geralen that I was pleasantly shocked to see how good Kim Jacob did.
ReplyDeleteSchools do cut people. It can get tricky and sometimes they medical them, sometimes they talk to them into retiring. Schools tend to avoid transferring because it looks really bad. They love to tout that no one transfers and that is often because they make it so they almost aren't allowed to.
ReplyDeleteBreazeal can easily be medically retired and put into a team manager role, which would be smart. To do that, it would only be beneficial if they had other talented girls who want to go to Georgia. Just giving the scholarship to a Georgia walk-on wouldn't help the cause for rebuilding the program.
Bottom line, Jay doesn't have the personality to engage the team and the head coach doesn't do much coaching. Val doesn't know much about gymnastics- at all. Listen to her talk about mistakes and skills...it is a dancer trying to be a coach. "Push your foot and feel the flow." That is what Valeri Liukin tells Bross every day.
Elise Ray even said that the assistant coaches are the technicians. Jay Clark was always the bar coach and a huge technician for them on the event. The head coach usually coaches beam, which takes the least coaching in terms of technique. It is mostly mental at this point on beam. Bars requires swing, vault has all of the block issues, floor has timing, technique. Beam is easier for the head coach to do because they have so many other duties. Julie Clark is worthless and didn't replace anyone as a strong technician. They wanted her to have personality more like Suzanne. She is bubbly, but a flake. You can tell that by watching her.
Rhonda peaks her team too early every season. They came back with a vengeance after embarrassing themselves at home at NCAAs and peaked by mid season. Macko was doing the AA very early after coming off of worlds and being injured. She got injured and seemingly ran out of gas a bit by post season.
Worley plans to study abroad this summer. She went to Australia in the off season last year. People study abroad in the summer to party. Gymnastics is not her only focus and it is probably an issue for her.
ReplyDeleteJay should've taken over as head coach of Ohio State when he almost left UGA in 04-05. He is more of the level of a coach of that kind of school. Grumpy doesn't have a dynamic personality for a top program.
ReplyDeleteKJ Kindler is taking lesser talent and working their asses into gear.
anon @ 8:17
ReplyDeleteAthletic scholarships are reviewed/renewed/withdrawn each summer. If UGA want to cut any or all of the three sophomores they can. They'll cop hell for it, especially from WOGA, but they can - and in my opinion should - do it.
The effect on team morale?
Negative re Noel Couch. Positive re everyone else.
Kat and Gina can't stand the trio. Hil and the poodle weren't keen either, though they're gone anyway.
As for the freshmen - this year's and next's - they need rescuing from the negative vibes Worley and most of all Tanella, who's the main locker room cancer, put out.
There is something to be said for having gymnasts stay at school over the Summer to get into tip-top shape. Take Cassidy McComb for instance...she had a great freshman year and two somewhat lackluster years after that (at least in terms of what she is capable of doing). She underperformed a bit her sophomore and junior years (although she was by no means as inconsistent as Tanella and Worley). I know that she stayed in Athens last Summer and worked her butt off to get in the shape she's in for this season. And look how that panned out for her...she's done awesome this season. I wish they could put a moratorium on studying abroad or even leaving campus for the Summer...kind of like what the Fall sports like Football do with their athletes. However, it's probably better if it's something that the athletes choose to do for themselves. Cassidy clearly had the desire to be her best self. I hope her younger teammates will follow her lead, but I have my doubts.
ReplyDeleteAmber Trani is already medically retired for Georgia. Problem is they do t have girls that can even step up and replace 9.7 or 9.8 routines. They need to be looking at solid level 10s that are coachable instead of injured elites that aren't. It's obvious Shayla has problems tanella just doesn't have talent consistency or a desire to improve. Georgia has become the rag tagg fugitive fleet of gymnastics under jay Clark. The right people aren't in place both fr and so classes that came in post Suzanne are a mess... No one is steering the ship and it's true Oklahoma has rocked it the last 2 yrs. I blame jay Clark and the coaching staff. He's inconsistent and therefore his teams lack consistency.
ReplyDeleteCan you honestly see jay telling Worley and Tanella that if they aren't in the 9.8-9.9 range they are out??? While I can see Suzanne doing that and she has called them out on national TV, Jay doesn't have that in him which is why they aren't doing it. Its a hot mess... and if they cut Worley and Tanella it hurts recruiting long term because good level 10s good elites have a lot of good choices why go somewhere where you could end up publicly humiliated, Georgia needs a new paradigm and Jay Clark just isn't it....they need a KJ Kindler not some loveable forest (Jay) Gump even the juniors are a mess and god bless Lindsey Cheek her whole dream in life was to be a gym dog and shes done it but she shouldnt be carrying them
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to be cut at least to send the message to the rest of the team that they need to get it in gear. The question is, who do they cut to really change the vibe or set a message:
ReplyDeleteA. Worley-for huge inconsistency and underperformance
B. Tanella-for lack of fitness, commitment, inconsistency
C. Jay Clark-for coaching a team that enables the likes of Worley and Tanella
I honestly don't know, but one of those needs to go if they're going to turn this ship around in the next few years. I say medical Brezeal and cut Worley. Then get all over Tanella to pull it together. Recruiting wise, they need some serious talent fast.
It seems like both Worley and Brezeal are good candidates for medical retirement. Maybe there are limits to total numbers of medical retirements though. I second that Jay's personality may not be dynamic enough for top tier. On top of that, they desperately need someone to coach floor and beam! and to motivate the team. Not sure what Julie's role is but it could also be adding to the problem. Yeah, it's all pretty much a mess right now.
ReplyDeleteI think Krista needs to pay a visit to that sushi restaurant you always see the WOGA chicks at over the summer and get some magic weight loss sushi. She never looked like that under Liukin, what an embarassment for WOGA
ReplyDelete