The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: PHOTO BY DANIEL SHIREY, GRAPHIC BY HALEY TEMPLE [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Courtney Kupets launches into the air during her floor performance Saturday at the NCAA Championships. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Freshman Kat Ding scored a 9.825 on bars during the Super Six. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Gym Dogs head coach Suzanne Yoculan cheers on senior Tiffany Tolnay after her vault routine at the NCAA Championships in Lincoln, Neb. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIEL SHIREY Tolnay performs her floor routine. [Click to enlarge]

LINCOLN, Neb. - If you have to give Suzanne Yoculan anything, it's this - she sure knows how to say goodbye.

Yoculan, the coach of Georgia gymnastics for 26 years, led her Gym Dogs one final time Friday night in Lincoln, and they repaid her with yet another NCAA championship, their fifth in a row and Yoculan's record 10th.

"This is a magical team," a teary eyed Yoculan said. "Just like every Gym Dogs team, they never quit."

Things started ominously on bars when junior Marcia Newby fell. But her score was erased by a number of solid routines, capped by senior Courtney Kupets' first 10 of the evening.

After a wobble-ridden beam set, the Gym Dogs fell into a tie for second place with Utah, 0.15 behind Alabama.

But they were not going to let Yoculan leave a loser. Every Georgia gymnast got at least a 9.9 on floor, giving them a 0.05 edge over the Utes for first place going into their final event. The Gym Dogs went on to post a season-high 49.625 on vault, again highlighted by a Kupets 10.

Overall, the Gym Dogs posted a 197.825, good enough for a comfortable margin over Alabama (197.575) and Utah (197.425), and it was a fitting end to Yoculan's coaching career.

"We're all really really excited because it was something really special that we all wanted to send Suzanne back to remember with," said junior Grace Taylor.

"And it wasn't just a championship. It couldn't get better than this … God blessed Suzanne. It was beautiful and we're all just so honored that we all got to be a part of this last year with her."

Said senior Abby Stack: "She said we wouldn't have won this championship without our four seniors, but I think we wouldn't have won it without our fifth senior. She provided the leadership for us to win."

So now what?

Championship-wise, Yoculan leaves Athens as the winningest coach in collegiate gymnastics history, as Friday's 10th title pushed her out of a tie with Utah's Greg Marsden.

She departs with a career record of 831-117-1, and is the honorary fifth member of Georgia's second straight senior class to leave Athens knowing nothing but national championships.

But Yoculan is still somewhere in her mid-to late-50s (she graduated from Penn State in 1975, but her exact age is impossible to find, perhaps by design), and the consummate go-getter and notorious multitasker no longer has a job.

That said, she's already got big plans for life after coaching.

Promotion has always been one of Yoculan's greatest strengths, whether for herself, her program or her sport.

And, even in retirement, that won't change.

She launched her newest brainchild, SuzanneYoculan.com (which offers her services as a public speaker and as a clinic instructor) just last week, and has plans to travel the country trying to convince schools to start new women's gymnastics programs.

She will still go to every Gym Dog meet, too, and plans to have four seats at Stegeman Coliseum so she can move from event to event.

But when it comes to road trips, old rivalries die hard, though, and there are exceptions.

"I will never go to Tuscaloosa, Ala. again," she said. "I don't even care if it's for the national title. I'm never going to Tuscaloosa again."

The 10th title that she and her Gym Dogs earned in her final meet Friday may have been the storybook ending for Yoculan as a coach, and a fitting transition into the Jay Clark era.

But in many ways it marks a beginning, too.

"Whether I'll like it or not I don't know, but I want to find out," she said. "I want to find out who I am other than the University of Georgia gymnastics coach. Because I don't really know."

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