The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/14/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Suzanne Yoculan finished her last practice in Athens as head coach for the Gym Dogs. The team flies to Lincoln, Neb., today for NCAAs. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Kat Ding doesn't know what to expect at NCAAs. [Click to enlarge]

Suzanne Yoculan has officially peaced out of Athens.

Yoculan and her Gym Dogs held their final practice before departing for the NCAA Championships in Lincoln, Neb., Monday, and for Yoculan, the architect of Georgia gymnastics in her 26th and final year as coach, it was her last ever in Athens.

Appropriately enough, she was sporting a T-shirt featuring a giant hand holding up two fingers and the word "out" underneath on Monday.

"See my shirt?" she said enthusiastically as she unzipped her jacket. "Peace! Out! That's been my saying for the past I don't know how many years. At the end of practice, I always say peace out. So [a few gymnasts] found this shirt for me a couple of weeks ago when they were shopping, and I thought it would be apropos."

The Gym Dogs begin their quest for a fifth-straight and record 10th national championship Thursday, and Monday was just another in a long line of lasts that Yoculan already has begun.

But she's not thinking about it.

"I'm in business mode right now," she said. "And I know I am because I don't sleep, can't eat. I'm going to be 100 pounds by the time the championships are over. My adrenaline's going a mile a minute."

It has long been an unwritten rule around Georgia gymnastics that you only talk about seniors on Senior Night, not before and not after. The same goes for Yoculan, this year's honorary fifth senior.

"We didn't really talk about it [being our last practice]," said senior Abby Stack. "We really are focusing on Nebraska right now and not focusing on the last time we're in here. We'll think about that when we come back. Maybe I'll practice a little bit just to say that was my last practice."

While Stack and classmates Paige Burns, Courtney Kupets and Tiffany Tolnay are shooting to become the second-straight class of Gym Dogs to leave Athens knowing nothing but national championships, a class of freshmen will be aiming to start their own run, nerves aside.

"[The upperclassmen] haven't told me anything, and I don't want to know," said freshman Kathryn Ding. "I'm just going to wing it and do my best."

Yoculan said Monday that the gymnasts in the first and second spots of each event rotation (like Ding and Gina Nuccio on bars, and sophomores Hilary Mauro and Cassidy McComb) have "looked better than they have all season."

The top-ranked Gym Dogs will be in the early session Thursday, competing against Stanford, Penn State, Oklahoma, LSU and Florida for the right to move on to the Super Six on Friday.

Ding said she's not really sure what to expect - but what would it feel like to bring home a national championship?

"Awesome. That's the word," Ding said. "It would be really awesome. I don't even know. I can't tell you. Yet."

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