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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2008 > April
April 2008
1, 2, 3, 4!!!!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, it’s official.
UGA has won its fourth consecutive NCAA womens gymnastics championship.
My brother Jon was at the meet and reports: “Georgia smoked everybody. It wasn’t even close.”
Congratulations to Suzanne Yoculan and her terrific group of athletes for a magnificent achievement.
Oh, and the Gators came in fourth!
How sweet it is.
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Champions, now and then
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Generally speaking, you’d figure any team’s chances of repeating as national champion in a sport would take a major hit when they lose their top performer, as UGA’s gymnasts did when Courtney Kupets, winner of two consecutive NCAA all-around titles, tore her right Achilles tendon midway through this season.
But the Gym Dogs aren’t just any team. As Georgia plays host to the NCAA National Championships in Athens beginning today, Suzanne Yoculan’s young women have notched another SEC championship and are seeded No. 1 as they go for a fourth straight national title.
What are their chances of pulling it off? I asked someone who’s observed the team closely this season: my brother Jonathan, who’s been around gymnastics for years, is the father of a talented rising gymnast, and is a longtime follower of the Gym Dogs. Jon said that “as long as they keep their heads in the meet and don’t get all caught up in the hype, there is not a team that can touch them.”
Now it’s up to Yoculan, a master motivator in her quarter century at UGA, and associate head coach Jay Clark, who’ll replace Yoculan after next season, to make sure the Gym Dogs keep their heads in the meet, as Jon said.
Smart money won’t be betting against them.
HERSCHEL WATCH: Speaking of national championships, my son was among those who stood in line last Friday at the UGA bookstore to get Herschel Walker’s autograph, and during the two and a half hours he waited he had time to read some of the book Herschel was there to sign. Most of it, of course, deals with his battle with dissociative identity disorder, but my son said the chapters about his time at UGA are somewhat interesting, although the 1980 season from post-Tennessee game to pre-Notre Dame is a paragraph. The most interesting stories are his first day on campus, the fact that he saw the movie “Time Bandits” on his first date (and describes it in detail), and his getting his shoulder popped back in during the Notre Dame game. … I caught most of the three late-night Sunday sports show interviews with Herschel (WXIA’s being the most extensive, as they devoted the entire half-hour program to him), and, as always, I was impressed with how he handled himself. It can’t be easy for a guy like Walker to talk about being “weak” and needing to seek help, and anyone who questions how genuine his story is or implies it’s all been cooked up as a ploy to sell books (with his ex-wife playing along? Come on!) is just being ridiculous.
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Another weekend, another SEC sweep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Having swept series against nationally ranked SEC opponents on consecutive weekends, the 11th-ranked Diamond Dogs are definitely turning heads in college baseball.
My daughter and I were in the crowd at Foley Field (which surprisingly wasn’t full despite glorious weather) as David Perno’s team took their third straight from ninth-ranked Kentucky on Sunday.
Georgia was down 4-1 at one point, having started off a little shaky, with starter Nathan Moreau pulled after three innings. But when you’ve got a bullpen like the Dogs have, that’s not a problem. The Bulldog relievers gave up only one run on two hits in six innings, with hard-throwing, long-haired closer Joshua Fields entering in the ninth to tie Georgia great Cris Carpenter for career saves.
Georgia’s bats didn’t do much early but that changed after SEC homerun leader Gordon Beckham slammed his 15th of the season with a man on base.
The Dogs are now 23-12 overall and sit atop the SEC with a 12-3 league record.
They play at home Tuesday and Wednesday against East Tennessee State and Georgia State (now if they could just figure out how to avoid those midweek losses to nonconference opponents!) before traveling to LSU for a weekend series. Their next SEC homestand is May 2-4 against Ole Miss.
Maybe it was the Masters that kept some folks home Sunday, but with the Dogs playing league-leading baseball, there’s no excuse for Foley Field not to be packed for the rest of its weekend games this season.
BULLDOG BITES: Speaking of packed houses, the Steg should be rocking April 24-26 as Suzanne Yoculan’s Gym Dogs will be hosting the NCAA championships and going for their fourth straight national title. Some football-centric UGA fans may not recognize what a dynasty Yoculan and soon-to-be successor Jay Clark have built at UGA, but there’s a very vocal and active fan following for this team that regularly fills the Coliseum. The Gym Dogs are some of our top athletes and deserve more woofs from the Bulldog Nation at large. … The UGA volleyball program was awarded the Commissioner’s Cup on Saturday for winning the inaugural Southeastern Conference Coaches Beach Volleyball Championships. All of the SEC’s 11 volleyball schools took part in the Beach Volleyball Championships, the first-ever beach volleyball tournament held by a Division I conference.
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G-Day from the grandstands
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday’s scaled-down spring G-Day game didn’t tell us much we didn’t already know, but it was still an enjoyable day at Sanford Stadium, despite the rain that kept the crowd to about half what the Athletic Association had expected. (Contrary to regular-season rules, they allowed umbrellas into the stadium for the game, but still sold a lot of those $4 Bulldog ponchos.) Although it had been announced they’d play 10-minute quarters, that was cut back to 8-minute quarters, which reportedly had more to do with Mark Richt’s concerns about depth at some positions than it did the rainy weather.
The Red team had the first-string offense and the Black team had the first string defense (though those starters mostly watched from the sidelines in the second half). The defense looked a lot better than last year’s spring game, but it was obvious the Dawgs have a ton of offensive firepower.
More observations I scribbled on the handy Game Notes page provided in the back of the official program:
Kris Durham seemed to pick up right where he left off in the bowl game, catching a 31-yarder from Matt Stafford at the beginning of the game. … We had a bunch of receivers out with injuries, which allowed Michael Moore a great opportunity to get out of the dog house, and he responded with three catches, two of them for touchdowns. The first was a deceptively easy looking 30-yarder from Stafford on the first drive; the second was a very nice 12-yard third-and-goal strike from Logan Gray on which the third-string quarterback known more as a running threat really threaded the needle. Flanker Israel Troupe also had fans talking with a couple of nice catches. … Gray showed off his speed on several runs; this guy’s going to be a breakaway threat. Stafford took off on one bootleg run but cut it short out of bounds, which was only fair since he wasn’t supposed to be tackled anyway. … Caleb King looked pretty good, with a slashing style and a really nice spin move that allowed him to pick up first-down yardage on one play. He broke some tackles, too. He still needs to work on his blocking (a missed block by him was responsible for one of the day’s seven whistle “sacks”) and on handling the ball. Looks like the competition for the third tailback spot between Dontavius Jackson, Kalvin Daniels and Richard Samuel mainly favors the latter two at this point. … The crowd got a kick out of the end of a play where Akeem Hebron ran 40 yards on a fumble recovery, only to get knocked down by second-string QB Joe Cox. … Knowshon Moreno didn’t play much, but looked fine when he did. He wore injured Tony Wilson’s #26 jersey, which no doubt gave the folks at Nike who’ve manufactured all those #24 black jerseys on sale at the University Bookstore a pause. … Brian Mimbs looked fine punting; backup Drew Butler was inconsistent. Walk-on placekickers Andrew Jensen and Brian Behr did have a couple of long field goals, but that was with no rush. The starting job awaits incoming freshman Blair Walsh.
ELSEWHERE: I caught a good bit of the men’s tennis team’s match against Kentucky Friday while awaiting the baseball game against South Carolina that ended up getting canceled. The Diamond Dogs and Gamecocks ended up playing a double-header Saturday that was swept by UGA. … A nice touch to a supper Thursday night with my brother and his gymnast daughter at the WOW restaurant in Five Points: Our waitress was Wally Butts’ great-grandaughter. … The UGA Bookstore currently has two different SEC Tournament champs basketball T-shirts and a Sugar Bowl championship shirt, plus a new 2008 schedule shirt listing all the games. They also have a variety of UGA shirts and sweatshirts in colors like green and blue, which my daughter and I thought just plain odd. Herschel Walker will be at the bookstore from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. April 18 signing his new book about dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder. … The UGA soccer team takes on the Mexican under-20 national women’s team in an exhibition match April 13 at the soccer stadium. Admission will be $10. … And you can start the countdown to Countdown to Kickoff, which is set this year for July 19. David Greene will join the Stinchcomb brothers as hosts.
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