Gymnastics: Talent, fun zone, space suits make gymnastics pretty cool

Women’s gymnastics is a sport that I am not very familiar
with, but I’m certainly not a detractor of the sport. These
athletes could all beat me up, and besides that, they are all
pretty cute. The stuff they do is pretty amazing. And I would break
my neck if I had to do any of it.

All that spinning and flipping! I would get so dizzy and vomit.
Don’t their mothers worry about them? Performing gymnastics
is like driving recklessly without wearing your seatbelt.

The NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships start today and
run through Saturday at Pauley Pavilion, and this is a perfect
opportunity to cheer on the No. 1 Bruins. Since I am new to this
sport, I thought I would get acclimated by attending the press
conference held Wednesday.

At this press conference, I learned there is more parity in
gymnastics today, with more teams competing at a higher level. The
increased competition means that today’s preliminaries are
more important than they may have been in the past.

“In the past you saved your new outfit for Friday,”
Georgia coach Suzanne Yoculan said.

Daniel’s inner monologue after typing that quote:
“Daniel, please don’t allow yourself to resort to trite
clichés just to get a laugh. Everyone expects you to make fun
of gymnastics and say it’s not a sport, it’s just an
excuse for women to wear bathing suits indoors and other cool
clothes. You don’t actually believe that. Don’t pander.
You are better than that. You are good and you are also brilliant.
You are so good.”

Well, I also learned that some teams are rather superstitious.
One such team is No. 4 Georgia. Let’s allow Georgia senior
gymnast Kinsey Rowe to explain.

“We looked back at the trend of the national championship
teams that we’ve had and decided to (model) our team after
those teams,” Rowe said. “Even down to the tattoos on
their faces. We are changing tattoos because every national
championship team has worn a bulldog, and we’ve worn Gs for
the last three years. So it’s just little things like that
mentally make a difference.”

Rowe didn’t mean actual tattoos, she was referring to
those cute little sticker tattoos ““ kinda like face
paint.

When you are at the Championship, be sure to check out the
Coca-Cola NCAA Spirit of Champions Tour, which travels to all of
the NCAA Championships and has a fun zone set up outside Pauley.
The event has a few different attractions like batting cages and
basketball courts where fans can compete for prizes. Doug Gardner,
the tour manager, says crazy stuff has happened on the tour in the
past, like when Dick Vitale showed up during the men’s
basketball Final Four.

DM: He’s pretty annoying.

DG: Yeah.

I wondered if there were any gymnastics-related events at the
fun zone. So I asked Gardner.

“We don’t necessarily have any gymnastics,”
Gardner said. “There is no swinging on the beams; we
don’t have the rings like in “˜Old School’
unfortunately.”

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention all the cool
outfits that the athletes wear. For example, Utah wears these
ultra-cool warm-ups that look like moon suits. I don’t know
if the space-age polymers in the black warmups make the athletes do
cooler moves, but they certainly look cooler. I asked senior Utah
gymnast Melissa Vituj about the warm-ups.

DM: What is your warm-up made of it? It’s pretty cool.

MV: I think it’s just a nylon. … You can touch it if you
want. … It’s just nylon.

(At this point Vituj hands me the sleeve of her space suit, and
I touch it.)

DM: It’s very futuristic.

MV: Well thanks.

No, thank you, women of collegiate gymnastics.

E-mail Miller at [email protected] to talk about the
pommel horse.