2008 Woodie Awards
Four gymnasts earn trip to NCAA regionals April 12
By: Justin Berndt
Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Sports
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CMU will be well represented at the NCAA Central Region Championships on April 12 as freshman Andrea de la Garza and sophomore Katie Simon both qualified for the meet in the all-around. Junior Vanessa Rodriguez and senior Danielle Espinoza qualified for the uneven bars and floor routine, respectively.
Central is second only to Mid-American Conference champion Kent State, which qualified as a team. Bowling Green was the only other MAC school with more than one individual qualifier with two.
Coach Jerry Reighard said the number of CMU gymnasts at the meet will serve notice to the gymnastics community, particularly high school gymnasts who are uncommitted to a program.
"I think it's going to be huge, a very big deal, especially with the volume of the people we're taking. Some of the other MAC schools have one individual, so we're more than doubled what they have," Reighard said. "So I think that this is a great building block. Everybody but (Espinoza) is returning, so it's going to be a real plus."
The regional takes place at 6 p.m. April 12 at Louisiana State University. CMU's gymnasts will compete with qualifying teams Stanford, LSU, Missouri, Kentucky, Kent State and Ohio State. Five individual all-around gymnasts, as well as one event specialist, also will compete in each event.
From there, the top two teams will advance to the national championship meet April 24-26 at the University of Georgia. The top two all-around competitors from a non-advancing team and the event winner also will advance to the national championships.
Reighard said the four have a chance to surprise the judges at the regional meet, despite competing a tough region that includes three of the top 18-ranked teams nationally.
"This is the NCAA tournament - this is the cream of the crop - so we're going to gain a lot of valuable experience just in seeing what the rest of the region is doing," he said. "We're going to see basically coast-to-coast gymnastics and really weigh ourselves to see exactly what we're doing versus some of the top level programs."
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