Canadian Kristina Vaculik took a year off school at Stanford to try for Worlds and Olympics. She qualified for Worlds Tokyo this past weekend.
But Mackenzie Caquatto is trying to do both Collegiate gymnastics and National Team, simultaneously:
… Caquatto and other members of the U.S. National Team will compete for a spot on the world team. The group meets in Houston once a month to work with Martha Karolyi, the team’s coordinator since 2001, in preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
That’s why Caquatto will keep such an insane schedule the next several months. And we haven’t even mentioned she is planning to compete for the Gators once the NCAA season starts in January. …
“She really has her mind set and we are going to do everything we can to help her achieve this goal,’’ (coach) Faehn said. “It’s very rare. There have been some athletes who have come back after college and have done it, but while trying to tackle a full [class] load and do this, it’s very rare and extremely challenging.
“I really think she can stay disciplined and focused and give it a shot.’’ …
Gators gymnast Caquatto is keeping a busy schedule as she attempts a rare challenge
I’m not liking her chances. Marta will want total focus on Tokyo and the Olympics.
Florida has a gorgeous new Player Bios section, by the way.
13 comments ↓
I had understood that NCAA athletes were restricted to 20 hours a week of training. How will this work leading up to Worlds?
The whole idea sounds poorly thought out.
I think the whole 20 hours a week thing is just for organized practices. The athletes can practice on their own for as long as they want. The way I’ve heard it, the top teams at least do encourage their athletes to do additional practice time on their own.
Yes the 20 hours per week is all that University of Florida can mandate. The extra hours she will train is on her own (can have supervision of course!!!!!!) and she is working under a training plan provided by Jiani.
The problem is the capped difficulty. It is nice that FAen is allowing it and she really has little choice. But it is basically a conflict. The problem is college gym emphasizes stickfests with low difficulty and working on a 9.9 versus a 9.8. To be elite relevent, the athlete ought to be working on new skills, higher difficulty, etc. For the men, it works fine, since scoring in college is essentially the same as FIG.
I can see Marta discouraging this real fast…
Good for Mack though…she really has come into her own this past year.
How will that work with FIG settings for bars etc, will she compete NCAA using FIG settings or will she awitch? I just cannot get my head around the whole thing.
I think it’s good for Macko. She used to always have mental downfalls in competitions and seemed to lack focus. I think doing NCAA will definitely help give her more competition experience. I remember Mohini Bhardwaj saying NCAA gave her an edge b/c of competitive consistency. Maybe that will help Macko.
Not to mention worlds are a little over a month away, so her elite training for worlds likely won’t interfere at all with NCAA. The only time I see an issue will be late in the Spring, when Macko should be working on getting difficulty up for Nationals/Trials/Olympics and she’ll instead be preparing for SEC/NCAA championships with lower difficulty routines.
But she’s good on bars and that’s exactly what the US needs. I don’t really see her making the team, but I think she could be an alternate…but who knows.
“How will that work with FIG settings for bars etc, will she compete NCAA using FIG settings or will she awitch? I just cannot get my head around the whole thing.”
Seems like a simple enough fix. I’ve never thought the FIG settings or adjusting the bars between competitors might be banned in NCAA or something. Why wouldn’t elites continue to use them if that’s what they’re used to?
All College gymnasts use the bars as wide as AAI will go, so far as I know.
She will train on a separate set of FIG Bars, I assume, through to Worlds, if she makes it. Then do the College season (different routine) wide.
“All College gymnasts use the bars as wide as AAI will go, so far as I know.”
All of them. Really? That seems strange that a gymnast who has been competing on the elite bar setting would have to change to a wider setting. They’ve already proven they don’t need a wider setting and the bars are adjustable, after all. Why make them switch?
Watch any NCAA meet Nd you will see coaches and managers scrambling to change bar settings in-between routines. They all go on whatever setting fits them best. No such thing as wide only. I know lsu uses at least 3 settings.
Ah. Thanks Chris. I’ll watch for that.
… My guess is that they are only changing height of low bar and high bar, though.
From looking at videos on youtube, I can see that they do change the width of the bars. The height of the bars wouldn’t be as common an adjustment since only a really tall gymnast would need the bars to be raised.
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