The NCAA News - News and Features

March 30, 1998

National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics

UCLA faces challenges for title

Event: 1998 National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships.

Overview: Defending champion UCLA will battle to retain its title against strong challengers from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan and Utah. Georgia is ranked as the No. 1 team based on regional qualifying averages. Michigan is right behind in the No. 2 slot, with Alabama, Utah and Florida on the Wolverines' heels in third, fourth and fifth place, respectively .... Returning to defend her all-around championship will be Georgia's Kim Arnold. Looking to dethrone Arnold will be teammate Karin Lichey, whose strengths are on vault and the uneven bars. Jenni Beathard of Georgia will look to keep her title as uneven bars champion .... UCLA's Heidi Moneymaker, Kiralee Hayashi, Lena Degteva and Stella Umeh are strong all-arounders, with Degteva specializing on vault, Moneymaker and Umeh solid in uneven bars. Umeh and Hayashi are looking for a balance beam crown .... Michigan features all-arounders Sarah Cain, Lisa Simes, Heather Kabnick and uneven bars specialist Nikki Peters, who tied with Cain for second place in last year's uneven bars contest .... 1997 vault champion Susan Hines of Florida will seek to protect her title and will be joined at the championships by teammates Chrissy Van Fleet and freshman Betsy Hamm .... Alabama will put forth a strong team with Merritt Booth, Shay Murphy, Lissy Smith, Gwen Spidle and Dara Stewart .... Utah's squad will feature the persistence of Angie Leonard, Shannon Bowles and Traci Sommer .... Washington will field title-seekers Klara Kudilkova, Lauren Rieseman, Tiffany Simpson and Jamie Stauffer .... Defending balance beam co-champion Elizabeth Reid of Arizona State will look to repeat solo in 1998.

Field: Twelve teams. The championships field also will include 12 individual competitors who are not on a qualifying team. Seven teams and seven all-around competitors not already on qualifying teams will compete at each of five regionals; the team and individual all-around winners in each region receive an automatic berth in the national championships. The championships field will be filled with at-large teams and all-around competitors who qualified on the basis of scores at the regionals.

Dates and sites: Regional competition will be April 4 at Alabama (Central), Arizona State (Midwest), Pittsburgh (Northeast), Georgia (Southeast) and Washington (West). The championships will be April 16-18 at UCLA.

Television coverage: The championships will be broadcast tape-delayed by CBS at 2 p.m. (Eastern time) May 3.

Information/results: The fax-on-demand telephone number is 770/399-3060 (passcode 1915); request numbers are 1402 for dates and sites, 1403 for bracket/schedule, and 5116-5119 and 5343-5348 for championships results/notes/quotes. Championship results also will be available on the World Wide Web at www.ncaa.org. Results will be published in the April 27 issue of The NCAA News.