In his 30th season as the Wolfpack gymnastics coach, coach Mark Stevenson is facing a new sort of problem — a surplus of talent.
“We’ve got one of the better teams we’ve ever had talent-wise,” Stevenson said. “Now we just have to see if we perform at the same level as they do in the gym in competition.”
Of the team’s 24 routines per meet, six gymnasts participating in four individual events each, Stevenson has 22 routines returning from last year.
“One of the things that happens when you’ve got a lot of kids that are really good, there’s only six kids that get to compete so you have to find ways to quantitatively figure out who is going to do the job for you,” Stevenson said. “The kids that hit the most routines in practice will be the kids that get the first shot in competition.”
On a team with six all-around competitors, senior Taylor Seaman is the leader during both practice and meets, according to Stevenson.
“She’s that kid that she walks in the gym every day, doesn’t matter if it’s a good day or a bad day, and she goes through her workout and gets it done,” Stevenson said. “I can’t say enough about Taylor and her attitude toward competeitve spirit.”
Seaman was named East Atlantic Gymnastics League Team MVP last season and was the only gymnast in the conference to earn first team All-EAGL honors in all four individual events and in the all-around.
“Taylor’s a competitor,” Stevenson said. “I know that I would bet on Taylor in a meet any day of the week to hit her routine.”
But in a sport of where every gymnast competes alone, junior Brittney Hardiman said the team atmosphere is the most important element of competition.
“In college it’s all about team, doing your job for the team, which sometimes makes it more stressful because you feel like if you mess up you let your team down,” Hardiman said. “But that’s also why you have a team. They help pick it back up.”
The team won the EAGL crown last year and hopes to improve upon that performance this year by making it to NCAA nationals.
“Our number one goal is to make NCAA Nationals and be one of the top 12 teams in the country,” Stevenson said. “Everything underneath that is an objective.”
The team was third in attendance among N.C. State sports last year, behind men’s basketball and football.
“We were 12th in the nation in attendance and [the students] are a huge part of that,” Stevenson said. “The more people we can get there the more fun it is for the kids.”
Gymnastics will host its first home meet this Friday at 7 p.m. against Rutgers in Reynolds Coliseum.
“We’ve worked really hard since August,” Hardiman said. “So I’m really excited for Friday, nervous but excited.”
Admission for students is free, and Stevenson said the team wants students to be loud.
“Unlike the meets we see on TV where it’s deathly quiet, we don’t want that at a college meet,” Stevenson said. “We want so much noise you can’t hear each other think.”