Hey Tide Fans!! I want to begin this week's Chalk Talk by thanking all of y'all who came out to Coleman Coliseum last Friday! We were able to pack in over 15,000 of the nation's most wonderful fans and compete in front of a sold out crowd!! It was pretty incredible! Be sure to come back this weekend, February 8 and bring friends so we can make history and pack out the Coliseum two weeks in a row!! Wow, there really isn't anything like Crimson Tide Athletics, is there?

Well, even though we had to deal with a frustrating loss to the Gym Dogs we put up a good fight and were pleased with our performance as a whole. Going into the meet, we knew we would be facing the best team in the country and we were excited to see how we would measure up. And I can confidently say we definitely measure up. While Georgia didn't have their greatest meet and had to count a few sub-par routines, we had our share of difficulties as well. Our team is capable of so much more and we still have the thrilling addition of Terin who was fighting the flu and will hopefully be back out there competing very soon! So it is really exciting to know that we have such room for improvement, yet we are consistently scoring solid 196s, most coming in meets with tight judging. Anyways, onto my meet highlights...

So our vault rotation was absolutely fabulous, even though the scores don't show it. For the second week in a row, Ricki led us off with a monstrous yurchenko full stuck cold! What a way to start the meet and get an enormous crowd fired up! Kaitlin, Kassi, and Brittany all followed solid vaults. The four of them created a perfect set up for Kayla to launch her version and complete the most text book perfect vault I think I have ever seen!!! Wow! It was impeccable!! Not to be outdone, Morgan came through with her high, soaring vault that we've all come to expect and love and barely shuffled on her landing! We honestly had an incredible vault rotation and it was so important for us not to place much emphasis on the scores so that we could go into bars with confidence.

And that's what we did. Our entire uneven bars lineup hit one after another. Kaitlin started us off with a rock solid set just like always. Ricki, Morgan, Kayla, and Jac all hit their routines for a common score of 9.8. The momentum just kept picking up after each routine, especially by the time Jac went in her first home competition since tearing her ACL last year. The energy carried over to Kassi who put an exclamation point on an already impressive rotation.

Now even though beam wasn't as strong as we would have liked, it was still a stepping stone in the fact that despite having a fall in the second routine, the remaining four girls did their job and were aggressive. It would have been so easy for Ricki, Kassi, Morgan, and Brittany to hold back in such a high pressure situation but they really fought hard. And like always, Casey gave us that confident and high quality starting point to build off of.

Floor was a stellar event for us Friday. With Ashley O in the lead-off spot, she was able to pull the crowd in right off the bat. Ricki had an awesome routine going and then had a little trouble on the last pass...but the good news is that tricky double tuck will hopefully be gone for good very soon as she'll be adding a piked full in to her last pass within the next couple of meets. Kaitlin had a great floor routine, and it was especially impressive considering she hadn't tumbled all week long after rolling her ankle the first day of practice last week. She's a competitor! Kassi's routine was highlighted by her stunning tumbling and a much improved presentation! She put four solid events together and won the all around over a highly competitive field. Kayla and Morgan are our 1-2 finishing punch that I bet every team wish they had! Boy those two can tumble, and they sure can dance! Really the entire floor lineup is just tons of fun to watch and is going to score huge now that we have another meet under our belt.

After the meet we got to enjoy a Medalist Club reception and chat with our fans and the girls all signed autographs. It was lots of fun and just very satisfying to see how happy some of the kids were. It makes it all so worth it!

We all had a very enjoyable weekend, many of us attending the baseball scrimmage and basketball game Saturday to support our fellow student-athletes. Kayla, Kassi, Brittany, and I even managed to soak up a little sun out at the ball park thanks to the great weather we have down here:) Not that I'm complaining about the 78 degrees in February! Haha

Oooh, one more very exciting tidbit...Ricki got baptized on Sunday!! Our FCA director did the baptism and several girls on the team (and David) were able to come out to watch and even some of the other student-athletes involved in FCA came to support Ricki! It was an awesome morning and just a very exciting event for her, her family, and the people impacted.

Well like I said at the beginning, our next home meet is this Friday and it's not just any home meet...it's the annual "Power of Pink"!!!! We'll be taking on the Arkansas Razorbacks, another top SEC team so it will be a great competition! Doors open at 5:30 so come out early to participate in the early prize giveaways!! See ya'll there!