Auburn gymnastics wants to "survive" and "thrive" at the SEC Championship.
The Tigers are coming off of a bye week before their first postseason competition since 2019. Last year Auburn, like all gymnastics programs, had to shut down just after the regular season. This means the Tigers have three women on their team who have competed in the postseason.
“Everybody else is sort of trying ot figure out what you mean when you’re talking about the SEC and postseason,” said head coach Jeff Graba. “[They’ve] got a lot of learning on the job to do in the next few days, but their mentality is in a really good spot.”
Auburn’s final home game was record-breaking as it earned the highest score of the season at 197.125. The following week Auburn had time to rest during its bye week. As always, this was a time for the athletes to rest physically. However, Graba stressed how the gymnast needed mental rest for what was to come.
“I did a lot of relaxing my mind,” said junior Derrian Gobourne. “I relaxed my body too but just giving mental toughness to myself. Just relaxing and not trying to overdo ot overthink, allowing myself to do other things. When it’s time to get back in shape mentally and physically that’s when I just turn it on and get back into things.”
Now the Tigers are looking forward to the SEC Championship with the goal of high performance. There are many factors coming into this meet with injuries, a young team and looking to replace road scores.
Auburn has suffered injuries all season long and got some relief in the end-of-season meets. However, freshman Olivia Hollingsworth suffered a foot injury against Arkansas and will now not be eligible to compete for the Tigers.
This left Graba with a hole in the lineup that caused him to do some moving around. This opened more opportunities for the team including a possible all-around performance from Gobourne. Gobourne has competed in all events frequently except beam. She has been working on her beam routine and performing at a high capacity in an effort to compete with it.
“That’s one of the three or four options we have on beam right now,” Graba said. “She is turning herself into a really good option on beam which would mean she’s in the all-around. But the good thing about this team is there are other people who are really cranking it up and trying to make themselves the option.”
The Tigers have a lot of motivation behind them. They’re looking to top a road score of 196.1 in order to heighten their overall National Qualifying Score for NCAA postseason competition. However, for now, Auburn is fully focused on what it needs to do this weekend.
“First things first, we have to survive the SEC Championship meet,” Graba said. “We have to try to thrive at the SEC Championship meet. If we do the thriving, we are set up really well for postseason. If we survive and learn a lot of things, we’re still set up for a really good postseason... They need to go out there, have a decent performance...and take some confidence away.”
Auburn will compete in the afternoon round of the championship starting at 2:30 p.m. CST in Huntsville, Ala. All of the events will be broadcast on SEC Network.
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Mattison Allen is a senior from Springville, Ala. She's majoring in public relations communications with the goal of becoming a sports information director one day.
