Young team hunts for championship

The N.C. State gymnastics team has high expectations for this season, but with only five upperclassman and eight freshmen, they will have to do some maturing to reach their goals. The freshmen will have to adapt to the college lifestyle and the pressures of performing at the collegiate level.

“With the younger kids, it is a learning process, they have never competed in a gym that will have two to three thousand people in it,” coach Mark Stevenson said. “They have always competed in a gym with maybe two to three hundred people. Also, at the club level, the meets are really quiet and in college there is noise, yelling and screaming, and everyone is cheering. “

The Wolfpack has finished in the top two of the East Atlantic Gymnastics League for the past three years, including a first-place finish in 2007. The team looks to continue this success again this year, and they believe with the talent on the team, they will have no problem being successful.

“I expect us to do really well. I think we will improve as the season goes on; we are a very young team,” sophomore Brittney Hardiman said. “I think with experience we will get better. There is a lot of talent, so I think we will do very well.”

Through unity, the Pack plans to work out the kinks in their routines and mature throughout the season in order to progress to where they need to be by the end of the season. The Pack will look to their coaches and to teammates for support through the season.

“We are really supportive of each other and we are always there to help [each other],” Hardiman said. “In the gym there is a lot of cheering and there is even more at meets.”

According to freshman Jess Panza, the team must focus on chemistry if they hope to return to championship form.

“We all work together, there are no clicks. There are only five upperclassman and they set very good examples for us,” Panza said. “[By] working hard and improving in everything we do I think we can win EAGL, I believe that we have the team to do it.”

The Pack will use the experiences they get from competition to improve from week to week. As the team completes more routines, they will become more comfortable. This will allow them to tweak the routines to become more difficult as the season goes on.

“Each weekend that we compete, we are going to try to be better at the routines we are doing,” Coach Stevenson said. “We will have more routines under our belt, we will have more practice and we will be able to fix the little things that are going wrong in competition.”

The Wolfpack has specific goals that they have set for themselves this season. These goals are on a poster in their practice room to serve as a reminder throughout the season. With hard work, they believe that these goals can be achieved.

“Our goals are to win EAGL, be top two at regionals, qualify for nationals, beat UNC every time we see them and be mentally and physically tough,” Coach Stevenson said. “I feel strongly that by the end of the season, we can be a contender for the conference title again, and we are hosting regionals which will give us a chance to be in front of our home crowd and be successful.”