Yoculan’s reign was one of a kind

Imagine, three hours before kickoff in Jacksonville, Mark Richt is sitting in the locker room getting a haircut and a shave. And Matthew Stafford’s his barber.

Jay Clark, the heir to Georgia gymnastics, howled at the thought. Hilarious, he said, and all the funnier because a version of that improbable scenario was playing out 20 feet from where he sat.

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AP

Suzanne Yoculan, who will retire this season, won her 10th national crown as coach of the Gym Dogs.

• Farewell brings back memories
• Photos: Yoculan's career
• Gym Dogs win title | Photos

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Shortly before Suzanne Yoculan would oversee her final home meet ever last month against Michigan, she retreated to a small room with a big makeup mirror. There, as before every meet, sophomore Cassidy McComb, an All-America floor performer, did her coach’s hair.

As McComb straightened and brushed, the two made salon conversation. Yoculan told stories about all the fuss made over the years about her appearance. High heels and red leather skirts created quite a stir.

Don’t worry, McComb assured Yoculan as retirement neared, “You’ll still be in the limelight, that’s for sure.”

‘I hope … I’m a teacher’

The career that Yoculan has chosen to put aside at 55 and seemingly at the height of her powers is difficult to categorize. There is no familiar frame of reference for the average college sports fan, as the pre-meet styling session attests.

She has ruled an eccentric kingdom comprised of 84 programs where champions are decided as subjectively as the best-in-show at Westminster.

Yoculan’s personality — “larger-than-life,” Clark estimated — was perfectly suited to giving a mysterious sport a figure on which to focus. We might not know a Double Arabian flip from an aircraft carrier, but we knew excellence and passion and a single-minded drive when we see it.

Style can be dismissed, washed away like sparkles and makeup. The sheer weight of her championships, though, cannot be ignored. No one in the sport has won more — Friday’s 10th national crown tied Utah for most ever and sent Yoculan off on a most fitting note.

The Gym Dogs final team competition Friday, in which they trailed after two events and then rallied for almost flawless routines on the floor and vault, was an ending seemingly hand-written by a departing coach.

“It validated everything,” Yoculan said.

“Going in [to the nationals] we talked about our magic,” she said, “It’s the magic of our unity, our closeness and respect for each other. That was the ‘it’ factor for this team.”

She had the best college gymnast in the country — Courtney Kupets — and terrific talent all around. And it all came together at the finish Friday, like the crescendo of a classical score that had been building for a quarter of a century.

Leading up to that moment were images from Yoculan’s long goodbye, each speaking to a unique career:

• The close of each home meet this season was punctuated by a video tribute to a retiring coach. Such disparate celebrities as comedian Jeff Foxworthy, cook Paula Deen, “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts and Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt weighed in on Yoculan’s years at UGA.

This is what a singular figure Yoculan is: Foxworthy was willing to risk all his redneck cachet by speaking well of gymnastics.

• As the Bulldogs basketball program foundered this season and the fans stayed away in droves, the Gym Dogs’ standing as Stegeman Coliseum’s leading tenant was never more apparent.

There were six home gymnastics meets this season that drew an average crowd of 9,727, the last three selling out. Basketball attendance averaged 6,622. Usually there is a reliable formula — the size of the crowd is relative to the size of the athlete. But not in Yoculan’s world.

This is what the Gym Dogs might miss the most with Yoculan’s retirement: “She’s an incredible promoter,” said Athens radio personality Allen Tibbetts. In the beginning, Yoculan, pushing her product, was on his morning show more than the weather report. She was such an irresistible force that 17 years ago Tibbetts began serving as the Gym Dogs meet announcer.

She never stopped aggressively trying to keep her team out front. Just before this season began, for instance, she imagined a poster promoting a charity stiletto race featuring her athletes in competition tights and spiked heels. Saying the idea was too provocative, the administration vetoed it. She would strain against the envelope to the end.

• Her Gym Dogs having underperformed at Arkansas in late February, Yoculan did what Yoculan does — crawl into her team’s head. You have no fight, she charged.

Her gymnasts reacted with just the kind of flare their coach would expect. Before the next meet, at home against Florida, senior Courtney Kupets and her mother scoured the Athens area for 15 pairs of boxing gloves. Gloved up like so many flyweights, the team entered the coliseum with the soundtrack to “Rocky” blaring overhead.

The Gym Dogs then went out and put up their best score of the season.

• Most telling of how Yoculan had intertwined her life with the lives of her gymnasts was the scene at the team gathering before the Michigan meet.

There would be no rah-rah session. No formulation of strategy. Rather, Yoculan asked a simple question, and had each athlete answer it in turn: Gymnastics is what we do, not who we are. Who are you outside of gymnastics?

Then it came around to her.

“When I came here, it was about getting exposure and winning trophies. What I became is not what I was when I got here. I hope now that I’m a teacher.”

It was as if Yoculan had posed that question as much for herself as any of her athletes.

“I’m struggling with what my identity is, especially here in Athens,” Yoculan said later. “I’ve always been the coach. No matter where I go or what I do, that’s all anyone wants to talk to me about is gymnastics, like there’s nothing else to me.

“It will be interesting to figure out what else I’m passionate about, what else interests me. When you’re the head coach of a championship program, you don’t have a whole lot of time to do a whole lot else, to figure out what are your other interests. I’m not sure exactly what they are going to be. I’m excited to find out.”