The gymnastics team will head to Morganton, West Virginia Saturday to compete in the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships hosted by West Virginia University. The meet, scheduled for 6 p.m. at West Virginia Coliseum, will feature a pair of highly ranked teams in Stanford University and Michigan who are both ranked 6th in the country based upon overall team scores for the season.
The Pack is used to going up against top-ranked competitors as its regular season schedule saw competition against top ten teams such as Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia. In all of these meets the Pack managed to hang tough with the higher ranked opponents, usually only trailing by a point or less at the conclusion of the meet. However, the Wolfpack did defeat a top ten team in Nebraska during the regular season, which should give confidence to a team comfortable with competing against top ranked squads.
“Competing against top teams motivates us and I think our chances of winning the meet are as good as anyone else’s,” sophomore Jess Panza said. “We will surprise people.”
In last weekend’s EAGL conference championships, the Wolfpack fell just short of earning its fifth EAGL championship title since the creation of the conference in 1996. The Pack earned a 195.700 and came in second place behind the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who won the event by scoring three tenths of a point higher than the Wolfpack.
According to senior Taylor Seaman, the Pack will come to the regional competition excited and motivated to build upon its meet last weekend in New Hampshire. The team, led by Seaman, will try and build excitement off of her most recent outing at EAGL’s. Seaman performed extremely well and earned first place in the all-round competition with a score of 49.325.
“We gave it our all during EAGL’s and fought hard on beam knowing that floor and vault have been our strongest events all season,” Panza said
The Southeast regional competition will feature six teams, all of whom will be vying for a top two finish at the meet to qualify for the NCAA National Championships held later this month in Gainesville, Fla. The Pack will face off against some talented and tough competitors such as No. 6 Stanford University, who is coming into this meet having most recently earned second place in the Pac-10 championships. Another team to watch out for is No.6 Michigan, who earned first place in the Big Ten Championships meet. Other teams competing against the Pack include No. 18 Southern Utah, No. 29 Kent State and No.31 West Virginia.
“The whole team is excited for regionals because if we have a good meet, we believe that we can make the National Championships and we aren’t intimidated by the other top teams we are competing against,” Seaman said.
With top scoring performances shown by many members of the team during the regular season, having a couple of individuals representing N.C. State University at Nationals is a major possibility given the talent level of the current team, as well as some outstanding individual performances noted by many first place honors. Consistently high performers, such as sophomores Brooke Barr and Panza and senior Seaman, have a chance at qualifying for an individual event should the Pack not make it forward as a team.
“We had our ups and our downs this season, but the atmosphere in the gym has been excellent which makes practice easier,” Seaman said. “We have so much potential and have a lot more to show this season.”
The key for the Wolfpack to be successful this weekend is the same thing it has been for most of the season, and that is for the team members to go out and hit their routines to the best of their ability. One struggling point for the team, which has cost them first place in a couple of meets, has been their execution on the balance beam.
“The most important thing for us is to hit our routines, and we know we can do the job at the right time,” Head Coach Mark Stevenson said. “We feel the other teams we are competing against are going to be a good matchup for us.”
