NCAA Championship Field Announced
April 10, 2012
INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA announced the teams and individuals that have advanced to compete for the 2012 National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships.
The championships, hosted by the Gwinnett Center and Georgia Institute of Technology, will be held at the Arena Gwinnett Center, April 20-22.
The women's gymnastics championships consist of 12 teams and 12 all-around competitors (who are not on a qualifying team) and individual event specialists. The top two teams and the top two all-around competitors from each of the six regionals have advanced to the national championships.
In addition, the event winners at each regional also advance to the national championships (in their specific event) if they were not part of a qualifying team or the all-around qualifiers.
The process for determining rotation pairings for Day 1 of the team competition at the site of the finals is based on a National Qualifying Score (NQS) calculated by adding the Regional Qualifying Score (RQS) to the score achieved at regional competition.
Once the NQS is calculated, teams are ranked based on the NQS from 1 to 12. Teams 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 12 were placed in Group A; and teams 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 and 11 placed in Group B. The host team and its corresponding group will compete in the second semifinal. If there is not a host institution competing, a random draw will be used to determine which group is placed in semifinal one or two.
Husky sophomore Aliza Vaccher (Eugene, Ore.) will compete in the all-around for the second-straight year at nationals after finishing fourth at the Seattle Regional. Last year she was paired with Georgia and finished 19th overall. This season, Vaccher will rotate with Oregon State in the evening session. The Beavers and Vaccher will start with a bye, and then move to floor, vault, a second bye, bars and beam.
In the 2011 championships, the Alabama Crimson Tide won their fifth championship title with an overall score of 197.650. UCLA finished second with a score of 197.375, followed by Oklahoma in third (197.250), Nebraska in fourth (196.725), Utah in fifth (196.500) and Michigan in sixth (196.425). Kylee Botterman was the first female Michigan gymnast to win an NCAA all-around title since Elise Ray in 2001. Second place was won by Alabama's Kayla Hoffman (39.5), while Georgia's Cassidy McComb and Alabama's Geralen Stack-Eaton shared third (39.4). Claiming the individual event titles were Alabama's Geralen Stack-Eaton (floor exercise), Florida's Marissa King (vault), Georgia's Kat Ding (uneven bars) and UCLA's Samantha Peszek (balance beam).
Team semifinal and all-around competition will be conducted in two sessions Friday, April 20 at noon and 6 p.m. ET. The top three teams from each semifinal will advance to the Super Six competition Saturday, April 21 at 4 p.m. The top four individuals in each event (plus ties) from Friday's semifinals will compete in the individual-event competition Sunday, April 22 at 1 p.m.
