Stanford women's gymnastics is competing in its eighth NCAA Championships in the past nine years, and 15th overall, this weekend in Fort Worth, Texas. Cardinal sophomore Carinne Gale will be providing a student-athlete's perspective of the trip and competition in a weekend blog series. Her third entry focuses on the team qualifying to its seventh NCAA Championships Super Six in program history.
Wow. Just wow.
Can you believe it? I absolutely can believe it because this team is incredible, but I'm also so grateful for and in awe of our performance Friday.
Let's start from the beginning. The morning began a little early but nice, nonetheless. We had our wonderful families and friends send us off before an efficient and confident warmup at the arena.
We all knew we had the talent to make this meet go in our way, but, no matter how much work you've put in, it's still a pretty stressful situation. It's an intense meet with bright lights and loud, dedicated fans, but Nikki McNair, the wonderful human being that she is, didn't let any of that phase her as she went up and hit a beautiful bar routine complete with a solidly stuck dismount to open the meet.
It was incredible. Scratch that, it was indescribable. The pure joy and excitement that the team felt after that set the tone perfectly for the rest of the meet, and the rest of the bar rotation was utter magic. That was exactly what we came to Nationals to do and we made such a huge statement on bars that other teams and fans couldn't help but pay attention to.
Beam was gorgeous with the Becky Wing showing the judges how SWG does beam and Ivana Hong making sure they had no doubt in their mind what the standard was for everyone else that day.
On floor, we showed our grit and went big with not one, not two, but THREE E-tumbling passes. The performances had all of us truly believing and seeing that going to the Super Six was really going to happen.
I'm sure most of you by now have seen or heard about the clutch performances of our two back vaulters, Ebee and Ivie.
Again, just wow.
Ebee did an undeniably gorgeous vault that put us back into position to secure our spot to Super Six, and Ivie, the ever incredible Ivie, competed her vault for the first time this year and nailed it. Like, really, really nailed it.
And we made it.
Just like that, all of SWG took a collective breath full of pride and relief and contentment that our hard work had, in fact, paid off. And right after that, all of SWG made a whole lot of noise because WE'RE GOING TO SUPER SIX!!!
At the end of the day, all I can continue to say is "wow,” over and over again. This group of people has fought through so much, has grown and still has so much more to show.
We are compassionate, humble, determined, loving and talented beyond belief, and today, that showed.
Get excited/pumped/ecstatic/enthusiastic for Saturday because every piece of who we are is going to be left out on that floor, and it's going to be more amazing than anyone can imagine.
