The SEC Championship was supposed to be a preview of the NCAA Championship four weeks later. It was in the same arena, had the same setup and even used the same equipment.
But the Alabama gymnastics team hopes the battle for the national title will have a different outcome than last week’s conference championship.
The Tide finished second to the Florida Gators and could only watch as the SEC championship was awarded.
“The whole environment was a direct mirror of what we’re going to see at the NCAA championships,” head coach Sarah Patterson said. “From that, it was a tremendous learning experience.”
Sophomore Diandra Milliner said the Tide suffered because of small mistakes.
“We just had a couple of mistakes and letdowns,” she said. “And then, it kind of overtook us a little at the end.”
Before the Tide can start thinking about a return trip to Duluth, Ga., for the NCAA Championships, however, it must compete at the Regional Championships this weekend. Alabama was selected as the No. 1 seed in the Seattle Region, along with Washington, Central Michigan, LSU, Iowa and Arizona. Only the top two teams from each of the six regions advance to the NCAA Championships.
It’s win or go home.
“This is where our sport becomes like basketball,” Patterson said. “If you don’t do it on that night, you don’t advance.”
“Our number one goal for Regionals is to go on to Nationals, and that’s really the only thing we can focus on,” senior Ashley Priess said. “We want to hit four events to the best of our ability and just be consistent.”
The Regional Championships have been kind to Alabama in the past. The Tide leads the NCAA with 26 regional titles, including seven straight.
Still, Patterson said the Tide won’t take anything lightly.
“The coaching staff does a good job of pointing out that nobody gives this to us,” Patterson said. “I’ve been in a regional before where one of our All-American athletes had to score 9.9 on bars the last event for us to advance — we were the second place team. You don’t take anything for granted.”
But the sting of coming up short at the SEC Championships still remains, and the question now becomes, how will the Tide respond?
“There’s always disappointment. My comments to the ladies are, it’s how you respond,” Patterson said. “There was a quote [Alabama head football coach Nick Saban] said, — ‘You’re either hungry or you’re satisfied.’ Are you satisfied where you are, or are you hungry to move forward?”
To help her team move forward, Patterson took the gymnasts through an exercise she hopes will make them forget the SEC Championships and shift the focus to Regionals.
“We wrote down a list of all the things that could have gone better that we wanted to change in the next few meets and how we were going to advance,” Patterson said. “We wrote all the bad things down, we rolled them up, burned them and then moved down a different path.”
They hope that path will lead right back to Duluth — just with a different result the second time around.
