The Alabama gymnastics team placed first in regional competition over the weelemd, earning a bid to the NCAA National Championship tournament, which starts April 22 in Gainesville, Fla., at the University of Florida.

“I thought we had a great performance,” said head coach Sarah Patterson. “We have room for improvement, but I thought for the most part, our ladies came out and set the standard on floor exercise and went to vault. I thought we laid the groundwork that we were the team to beat. For that, as a coach, you have to be very excited.”

Alabama started out with the floor routine, where they posted their highest score of the season with a 49.525, which gave them momentum for the rest of the tournament.

“We were all a little nervous about it [doing floor first] because it’s not an event you like to start out on,” said sophomore Geralen Stack-Eaton, “but we all just kept building on each other’s routines, and it was great. We kept building from there.”

Stack-Eaton won the all-around at regionals with a 39.55, the second highest score of her career. She said she was pleased with the team’s overall performance and was looking forward to nationals.

“I’m hoping we’ll advance to the finals and everything will just click, and I hope we bring back that national championship,” she said.

The Crimson Tide is competing as the No. 3 seed and will start the semifinals on the vault and will, after a bye, proceed to the uneven bars and balance beam. After a second bye, Alabama will finish the night on the floor exercise.

This will be their 28th consecutive trip to the tournament, and Patterson said this trip would be just as sweet as the first one 28 years ago in Salt Lake City.

“I never take it for granted that it’s an automatic qualification because I know things can happen that are beyond your control,” she said. “It never gets old qualifying for the national championship.”

The team got back into the gym Monday to continue practicing for nationals. Patterson said the team continues to practice everything they can, such as intrasquads to prep them for what they’ll see in Gainesville.

Alabama will face No. 2 seed Florida, who beat them out for the SEC title, though Alabama won a regular season contest. Stack-Eaton said she wasn’t nervous about competing against them again.

“They’re a great team,” she said, “but I think as long as we have confidence in ourselves and each other we’ll be fine. We’ll do what we can do and control what we can control.”

Because Florida is the host school, there will be a majority of Gator fans at the event. Stack-Eaton said the team will use the rowdy crowd as an incentive to do that much better.

Patterson said that while the Gator fans were rowdy for the SEC tournament, the team wouldn’t focus on that.

“Our goal is to always be on the floor the last night with the chance to win the championship,” she said.

The Tide leaves Tuesday, April 20, has a warm up day on Wednesday and then starts the tournament Thursday. The competition will go through Saturday.