Alabama Gymnastics Preparing For NCAAs

The Alabama gymnastics team will be in Athens, Georgia, April 24-26 for the 2008 NCAA Championships. The Crimson Tide will compete in the first of two preliminary sessions and will open on balance beam.

The Alabama team of Coach Sarah Patterson is seeded sixth coming into the NCAA Championships being held on the University of Georgia campus at Stegeman Coliseum. After starting on the balance beam, the Crimson Tide will then move to a bye, followed by the floor exercise and vault. After a second bye rotation, Alabama will finish off the meet on the uneven bars.

Joining the Tide in the afternoon session, which gets underway Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT, will be No. 2 seed Florida, No. 3 LSU, Oregon State, Oklahoma and Arkansas. No. 1 seed Georgia along with Utah, UCLA, Stanford, Michigan and Denver will compete in the second preliminary session, which starts at 7 p.m. EDT. The top three teams from each session will advance to Friday’s NCAA Super Six Team Finals which gets underway at 6 p.m. EDT.

The top four individuals from each session in each event (plus ties) from the preliminary team and all-around competition on Thursday will compete in the individual event finals on Saturday at 6 p.m. EDT.

Beginning with the 2008 championships, the process for determining rotation pairings for day one of the team competition at the site of the finals is based on a National Qualifying Score (NQS) calculated by adding the Regional Qualifying Score (RQS) to the score achieved at regional competition.

Once the NQS is calculated, teams are ranked based on the NQS from 1 to 12. Teams 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 12 were placed in Thursday’s evening session and teams 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 and 11 were placed in the afternoon.

Alabama is making its 26th consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships final site. The Tide won its 23rd NCAA Regional Championship last Saturday.