For 4 a long time, NCAA girls’s gymnastics has been minus a “Energy 5” convention, however 2024 marks a brand new period, with the revitalization of ACC gymnastics.
We sat down with every of the convention’s 4 head coaches to listen to what it means to be introduced into the ACC fold — for his or her groups, their followers, their establishments, and even their recruiting efforts.
Learn our preview of the 2024 ACC Gymnastics Championship right here.
A brand new dynamic
After serving as the top coach of the Georgia Bulldogs from 2012-2017, North Carolina Head Coach Danna Durante is aware of what convention notoriety means in serving to groups up their video games:
“The ACC brings an unbelievable quantity of title recognition. Our student-athletes on campus didn’t essentially perceive what the EAGL convention was (as a result of all of them competed inside the ACC), however everybody understands ACC, together with recruits. It brings the next stage of status to your program that we’re enthusiastic about.”
“I’m additionally excited for collegiate girls’s gymnastics. The addition of Clemson’s program, the ACC sponsoring girls’s gymnastics, and the NCAA and ESPN agreeing to a brand new 8-year deal to air girls’s gymnastics on ABC, alongside volleyball and girls’s basketball, all communicate to the continued progress and recognition of this sport that brings pleasure and management throughout the nation.“
For Clemson Head Coach Amy Smith, who shifted from head coach at Utah State to start out this system at Clemson, this inaugural season was one thing she by no means envisioned would even be doable:
“It’s an absolute dream come true to have the ability to begin a Energy 5 gymnastics program from the bottom up and construct each piece of it.”
“The workforce is worked up to characterize a brand new Energy 5 gymnastics program and understands the magnitude of that. They’re an unbelievable group of younger girls, and I’m simply so grateful to get to educate all of them.”
Like Durante, Pitt Head Coach Casey Jo MacPherson additionally coached within the SEC for 10 years:
“It’s superior to start out a brand new convention for gymnastics. What’s additionally nice is the ACC is a robust athletic convention, so I believe ACC followers are going to be enthusiastic about including a brand new sport. And I really feel prefer it’s going to be a aggressive convention straight away.”
“While you’re in a aggressive convention, it actually forces you to be at your finest weekend and week out — and that makes everybody stronger too. So I’m excited not only for this 12 months, however to proceed to observe the entire packages within the ACC get stronger every year.”
NC State Head Coach Kim Landrus is in her seventh 12 months on the helm of this system after leaving the Huge Ten convention, and she or he sees the joy their new convention is bringing to the Wolfpack’s campus:
”All of the sports activities at NC State are ACC-sponsored sports activities. So now that gymnastics is, too, simply with the ability to have that chance to go win that (ACC convention) trophy like the opposite sports activities is particular.”
Chasing championship rings
And talking of that convention championship trophy, it most likely gained’t shock you that every one 4 groups have their eyes set on one related aim: to take house the primary ACC Championship in 40 years.
The Wolfpack gained the one and solely ACC gymnastics trophy again in 1984, in order that they’re particularly hungry to safe their second one.
Landrus believes they’ll have the ability to hit all their huge targets for the season — together with the ACC championship title, day two at NCAA Regionals, and a high 25 end — by “specializing in the method and the journey.”
Smith, whose first-year Clemson workforce has already surpassed the 197 mark and at the moment sits at No. 29, expects to hit their two targets for the season. “We wish to be a seeded workforce [in the NCAA tournament] with a high 16 end and to win the ACC championship.”
For MacPherson, she has the Panthers targeted on big-outcome targets, and though the Panthers are mathematically-eliminated from the NCAA event as a workforce, there’s nonetheless the convention championship meet and doubtlessly qualifying people:
“We gained’t have the ability to obtain these issues if we don’t keep targeted on the week at hand. What’s the week in entrance of us appear to be? What can we do in that individual meet to remain inside our course of to do the issues that can assist us obtain these big-picture targets.”
Of their third season beneath Durante, the Tar Heels may even miss the event as a workforce, however there are different necessary issues which can be indicative of the state of this system:
“Past [the standard goals]: how are we executing our gymnastics? How are we thriving on the finish of the 12 months when it actually issues probably the most? How are we displaying up in our group? And what forms of persons are we turning into? These are all big-picture targets as we proceed to put the muse for being a nationwide energy.”