After last year's season was plagued with injuries, the Penn State women's gymnastics team is looking forward to returning to its traditional ways in the upcoming season.
"This season is going to be a tremendous opportunity for our team to stage a comeback because the last two years we have not been able to qualify for the NCAA Championship," Penn State women's gymnastics coach Steve Shephard said. "But seven out of the last nine years we have."
While the Nittany Lions are looking forward to getting back on track, the team must try to stay healthy all season long.
"As of right now the health is good," Shephard said. "Health is always an issue with women's gymnastics, but we are looking forward to having a healthy team and trying to maintain our health."
Seniors Katie Rowland, the returning Big Ten Champion in the All-Around, Katie McAvoy, who suffered a devastating injury at the end of last year's season, and fifth-year senior Nikki Bongiovanni, who is staging a comeback from a shoulder injury she suffered last year, are looking to make strong contributions to the team.
In addition to these three solid gymnasts, the team will also be looking to senior Leslie Bair to have a powerful impact on the team as well.
"We are really optimistic this season," Rowland said. "We have a lot of depth on our team this year that we were lacking last year because of injuries."
Besides all the returning gymnasts, the four freshmen on the team will have to do their part in making the team a success.
"We are looking to freshmen Michelle Ilg to do real well, as well as Jennifer Orlando, and Meredith Hoover," Shepherd said.
According to Shephard, the other freshman on the team, Erin Clayton, has spondylolisthesis (a bad back) and she also has a herniated disk.
"She is on hold right now until she gets better," Shepherd said.
All of the gymnasts get their first test of the season on Jan. 11 at the Super Six Challenge in Georgia. Among the teams that were invited to this televised event are returning National Champion Alabama, Georgia, who finished second in the country last season, Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Penn State.
"It [the Super Six Challenge] is a great meet to start off with," Rowland said. "It puts a lot of things into perspective and it is televised so it is a great promotion for our school and a good way to show everybody that we can compete with the top teams in the country."
After this great test for the Nittany Lions, they return home on Jan. 18 to battle New Hampshire in their first home appearance of the season. On the 25th the team travels to Denver to compete against Denver and Iowa State. The student athletes return home on Feb. 1 against Pittsburgh. The 7th and the 15th finds the gymnasts at Oklahoma and West Virginia and then they return home on Feb. 22 to clash with Ohio State. The Nittany Lions tussle with Nebraska on Mar. 1 and travel to Minnesota on the 8th. They encounter Florida, Temple and Yale on the 14th to finish their home stand meets.
"Most of our meets are good traditional rivalries," Shephard said. "We are looking forward to competing with everyone on our schedule."
Since the Nittany Lions have a competitive schedule, the team has set its goals at the top.
"We want to win the Big Ten Championship and qualify for Nationals to get our team back into the Super Six, which is like the Final Four of gymnastics," senior Dana Cuomo said.
To prepare for the upcoming season, the gymnasts began their long and grueling practices in August.
"It is a grilling preseason for us," Shephard said. "We start working out in August to start training to get into routine shape to where we are doing full routines by this time of the year."
The team starts practices so early to make sure that the gymnasts are at the peak of their routines at this time of the preseason.
With this in mind, the team is looking forward to a very productive year.
"We are really excited for the season to start, we have been practicing really hard and we are excited for this year," Cuomo said.
