Spring Break
Perfect 10s 'contagious' for Gym Dogs
TYLER ESTEP
Issue date: 3/19/09 Section: Sports
Supposedly nobody's perfect.
But three different Gym Dogs have accounted for five perfect 10s this season, leaving the debate somewhat open.
Georgia senior Courtney Kupets and juniors Courtney McCool and Grace Taylor all chipped in 10s this season, for the Gym Dogs' biggest accumulation of perfection since the 2004 team had seven.
"It's definitely contagious, definitely, definitely," McCool said. "Because you see how it affects that person and how they get up there and why there up there and why they're doing what they do."
Said Taylor: "There's an electricity that I feel when anyone gets a 10."
Only three other gymnasts (LSU's Ashleigh Claire-Kearney, Florida's Melanie Sinclair and UCLA's Vanessa Zamarripa) in the country have reached perfection in 2009.
But Kupets has done so three times (twice in one meet), with McCool adding a 10 two weeks ago against UCLA. Taylor joined the club Saturday against Michigan.
So what makes a 10 different from, say, a 9.975?
"It's funny, because sometimes you feel those 10 routines and they're not 10s," Kupets said. "An actual 10 routine in our mind is one where you do everything the way you want to do it, you don't have any bent arms, your handstands are all the way up, and you have that stuck landing with your chest up, and it's just this feeling of that was it, I did it. And you don't care about the score, you don't care whether it was [actually] a 10 or not."
Said McCool: "It's a feeling I have on beam, it's a feeling I have through every skill that if I have my calm confidence, it's there. It just shows up."
The trio have Gym Dogs have all scored 10s on balance beam, and Kupets has added one apiece on bars and floor as well. With the start of postseason action starting Saturday with the SEC Championships, 10s may be harder to come by, as the switch to a four judge system on each apparatus is made.
"Obviously there's always room for a reduction if you're critical enough," Taylor said. "No human is perfect."
But the Gym Dogs sure are trying.
"We are perfectionists," Kupets said. "We're gymnasts, but we're perfectionists, and we want to do everything right all the time."
But three different Gym Dogs have accounted for five perfect 10s this season, leaving the debate somewhat open.
Georgia senior Courtney Kupets and juniors Courtney McCool and Grace Taylor all chipped in 10s this season, for the Gym Dogs' biggest accumulation of perfection since the 2004 team had seven.
"It's definitely contagious, definitely, definitely," McCool said. "Because you see how it affects that person and how they get up there and why there up there and why they're doing what they do."
Said Taylor: "There's an electricity that I feel when anyone gets a 10."
Only three other gymnasts (LSU's Ashleigh Claire-Kearney, Florida's Melanie Sinclair and UCLA's Vanessa Zamarripa) in the country have reached perfection in 2009.
But Kupets has done so three times (twice in one meet), with McCool adding a 10 two weeks ago against UCLA. Taylor joined the club Saturday against Michigan.
So what makes a 10 different from, say, a 9.975?
"It's funny, because sometimes you feel those 10 routines and they're not 10s," Kupets said. "An actual 10 routine in our mind is one where you do everything the way you want to do it, you don't have any bent arms, your handstands are all the way up, and you have that stuck landing with your chest up, and it's just this feeling of that was it, I did it. And you don't care about the score, you don't care whether it was [actually] a 10 or not."
Said McCool: "It's a feeling I have on beam, it's a feeling I have through every skill that if I have my calm confidence, it's there. It just shows up."
The trio have Gym Dogs have all scored 10s on balance beam, and Kupets has added one apiece on bars and floor as well. With the start of postseason action starting Saturday with the SEC Championships, 10s may be harder to come by, as the switch to a four judge system on each apparatus is made.
"Obviously there's always room for a reduction if you're critical enough," Taylor said. "No human is perfect."
But the Gym Dogs sure are trying.
"We are perfectionists," Kupets said. "We're gymnasts, but we're perfectionists, and we want to do everything right all the time."
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