Men battle to advance against other top teams

The Michigan men's gymnastics team has one goal left for this season.

This season, the Wolverines wanted to be the top ranked team in the nation, and they are.

They wanted to win the Big Ten Championship, and two weeks ago they traveled to Iowa and became the conference champions.

The only goal left to fulfill for Michigan is winning a national championship.

But to compete in the NCAA Championships, the team must first qualify in regional competition.

The NCAA regionals, which begin tomorrow night in Champaign, features some of the best teams in the nation. Of the seven teams competing, six of them are representatives of the Big Ten.

Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State, Michigan State and Illinois qualified for the East Regional along with Massachusetts. The only Big Ten team that did not rank high enough to advance to regionals was Minnesota.

The teams in the East Regional all rank in the top nine in the country. The Big Ten holds the nation's top four spots.

On paper, the meet looks to be one of the most competitive in the nation, featuring the most talent of any meet this year. Because of the qualifying rules, only three Eastern teams will be able to qualify for NCAA Championship competition.

The system of qualifying means that four of the teams in the East region will be eliminated even though there are only two Western teams that rank amongst the top nine in the country.

This means that at least one of the top four teams in the country will be left out of championship competition.

Michigan's No. 1 ranking guarantees them nothing at this point in the season. The Wolverines have lost to all three of the other top-ranked schools this year, although the team has been victorious in recent weeks.

But the Wolverines have scored more than 230 points in each of their last three competitions. The only other team to score more than 230 this year is Ohio State. Michigan's scores have constantly improved throughout the season, reaching their high in recent weeks.

"I think that our team is very capable of putting up a higher score than we did at Big Tens, quite a bit higher," Michigan coach Kurt Golder said. "But I think that if we got the same score it would be good enough (to qualify)."

Michigan still has the opportunity to improve. The team is still recovering from injuries that have plagued it throughout the year.

Kevin Roulston and Adam Hattersley may compete in events that they have missed the entire season. With the introduction of more specialized routines, the team has the ability to improve it's score significantly.

Also helping the Wolverines are their increased levels of confidence as of late. Because the team is so young, confidence plays almost as big of a role as talent does. The team is not used to competing for the NCAA title.

"With the performance that we had at Big Tens, it really gave the guys a huge step forward in terms of confidence," Golder said. "When you're confident you can do your best. When you're not, then your muscles are a little tense and there is that added little bit of pressure. These guy's confidence is at its peak."

Tomorrow

Michigan at NCAA Regionals

Where:

Champaign

When: 8 p.m.

The Latest: No. 1 Michigan will battle many of its Big Ten foes in its road to the NCAA finals.

04-09-99