Adversity hits Clark and team after losses

by ryan Scates

When Jay Clark took over the storied Georgia women’s gymnastics program, no one had to inform him of the pressure that comes with being the head coach of the team with the campus’ highest expectations.

In his 18th year with the UGA gymnastics program, Clark knows all about the five consecutive national championships, the 37 individual national champions, the world-class facilities and what it means to be a Gym Dog.

With the team’s 1-2 start, it should be no surprise that Clark also knows what it will take to get his squad back to its winning ways, which, interestingly enough, means doing more than just winning meets.

“No one walked out of that first meet feeling like we had actually won,” explained Clark. Georgia opened the season at home against Stanford on January 9th; the Gym Dogs won that meet by one-tenth of a point.

To Clark and the Georgia program, the difference between a good team and a great team goes beyond margins of victory and defeat. “There is a very small margin for error,” said Clark. “Gymnastics is a sport that you typically don’t see won on the emotional makeup of a team. And what I mean by that is you are not going to see upsets based on a team coming out and getting jacked up by playing good defense like you might in football. We have underperformed a bit to this point, and in gymnastics upsets happen when a team under-performs.”

Despite the Gym Dogs recent losses at Alabama and Utah, Clark is confident the best is yet to come with his 2010 squad. “I think you are going to see more and more consistency out of this team,” Clark said. “We saw a lot of turning in the right direction in the last meet (against Utah)…the way we bounced back was tremendous, and that is the mark of a good team.”

While the Gym Dogs came up short against the Utes, they posted their highest total of the season at 196.50. Utah posted a razor thin .05 higher at 196.55. “There have been years where we haven’t broken the 195 mark until halfway through the season,” Clark added.

To help understand gymnastics scoring margins, Clark offered a simple football analogy.

“A five-tenths victory is about like a touchdown and a point victory is like two touchdowns,” he explained. “So for us to lose by half a tenth of a point gives you an idea of how close that meet was.

“We have struggled early, but that’s not atypical of what has happened here over the past five years,” acknowledged Clark. “We are real close now…this team has the potential to win a championship.”

The team will have opportunities to get back on track when it travels to Auburn on Friday and host Kentucky in Athens on February 5.

Tagged: jay clark, gymdogs, uga gymnastics