The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- March 1, 1999

Stepping out of region

BY VANESSA L. ABELL
STAFF WRITER

The NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee's attempt to balance championships competition appears to be on the beam.

The committee has brought about some significant changes to the National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships in 1999. It has determined to seed the top 12 teams nationally, based on the regional qualifying scores. Two of the top 12 teams will be paired into each of the six regional championships. With each regional championship sponsoring the competition of six teams, the other four team slots will be selected from within the region.

The regions also have been redesigned for the 1999 championships. The committee expanded the regional contests from five in 1998 to six and changed the number of teams and all-arounders competing at each regional site from seven to six. The top two scoring teams and the all-around winner from each regional competition will receive a berth into the national championships.

The remaining all-around competitors will qualify to the national championships on the basis of rank order of finish (highest score) from all six regional championships. If the all-around winner in a region is on a team that already has advanced to the national championships, that position will revert to an at-large berth. In addition, the event winners at each regional who score at least a 9.8 may advance to the national championship in that event, if they are not already attending the championships as a member of a qualifying team or as an all-around qualifier.

The committee's redesigning of the regions was done in an effort to balance both the numbers of sponsoring institutions in each region along with the competitive strengths within each region.

Interests peaked

The committee's actions have peaked the interest of the women's gymnastics community. Many are curious as to how the top 12 teams will be paired across the country. The ideal situation would be if the No. 1 seed was placed in the identical regional contest as the No.12 seed, with No. 2 matching up against number 11, No. 3 vs. 10, 4 vs. 9, 5 vs. 8 and 6 vs. 7.

There are many variables that will factor into the regional placements, including which institutions are hosting predetermined regional championships in a given year. The committee expects to provide pairing guidelines to the gymnastics community in a mailing scheduled for early March.

As a whole, gymnastics coaches enjoy the specificity of rules in that it enables a coach to follow the actions of the committee and understand the proce-dures of the committee's decisions. Not knowing how the committee will place the top 12 teams is an issue in which the coaches have a keen interest.

Many coaches agree that the seeding is a significant improvement for the women's gymnastics championships. In 1998, teams and all-around winners advanced to the national championships from the regional competition by receiving an automatic berth in reward for winning the regional contest. The other seven qualifying teams and all-around competitors qualified for the national championships on the basis of rank order of finish from all five regional championships. This process was especially difficult for those teams that competed in Eastern time zone regional championships because after a meet was completed on the East Coast, the West Coast competition may just been getting started.

Coaches noted the potential anguish of completing the regional meet and waiting for the scores to be submitted at the end of another contest across the country to find out if a particular team received one of 12 slots in the national championship. A team that may have placed second in a regional that was held earlier would not know its fate until the end of the West regional contest.

Favorable reaction

Linda Burdette, coach at West Virginia University and a member of the Women's Gymnastics Committee, knows the feeling of being on the East Coast and waiting around for the West Coast to finish. Burdette likes the idea of the national championship qualification being decided in only the specific regional competition.

"Whether you qualify or not will be determined on the floor where you are competing," she said. "It will make new teams available in different parts of the country. For the media, it will be 10 times better. They will have the results immediately now."

Burdette also recognizes the increased opportunity for her squad to advance to the nationals. West Virginia will host the regional championship in region six, which extends from New Jersey to Florida.

In the recent past, the University of Florida and the University of Georgia have dominated the top two berths into the national championships from the southeastern part of the country. With Georgia and Florida facing the prospect of being seeded into another region, it gives additional opportunities to those teams that have typically been bubble teams, such as West Virginia.

"There will be different teams," Burdette said. "This gives us a chance. It equalizes to some degree. If a team's scores are inflated, it will equal out at the regional among the in-region teams."

Greg Marsden, coach at the University of Utah, a team that has not only has made it to every NCAA women's gymnastics championships, but has won nine team titles, agrees that the seeding is a positive message to the women's gymnastics community.

"This is a good step forward," he said.

Marsden doesn't believe the seeding progress should end there though. "Twelve isn't deep enough," he said. "We need to go down to 18, at least. The other three teams are fine staying in geographic region."

The University of Michigan has the most interesting regional placement. Although geographically situated in region four, a mostly Midwest region, Michigan was placed in region five, the Northeast region. The committee does have the privilege of moving institutions out of their natural geographic boundaries to better balance competitive strengths. Michigan's move is an attempt to balance the strength among the regions.

Michigan coach Bev Plocki disagrees with the regional assignment but is enthusiastic about the new seeding.

"The general concept is very good," she said. "Sometimes a region's automatic score was two points lower than other teams. Head-to-head within region will stop comparisons of regions. The top two from each region will work much better."

Even though Plocki is not in favor of the newly designed regional map, she said, "No system when you change it is going to be perfect. It needs tweaking. There are definitely going to be bugs."