Gymnastics team to compete in NCAA regional championships
Record-breaking season sees Tigers compete in regionals for first time in two decades
By Kyle Hobstetter on March 30, 2021
Fifteen of the 17 members of the Towson University gymnastics team had not been born yet the last time TU made the NCAA regionals. Starting next week, the current TU team is ready to break this 21-year drought.
The Tigers will compete in the Morgantown Regional at West Virginia University and have qualified for a bye into the second round on Friday, April 2. TU will compete at 1 and 7 p.m., and will open the competition on vault, bars, beam and floor.
Other teams competing in the region are Michigan, California, Brigham Young, UCLA, Ohio State, Kent State, Penn State and West Virginia.
After having last season end prematurely, head coach Jay Ramirez told his team before this season started that it was going to take “a lot of duct tape, a lot of pivots, so let's just grit it, bear it and make it happen.”
The team has made it happen for Ramirez. When he took the job two years ago, TU was ranked No. 58 in the country. Now heading into its first regional in two decades, the Tigers are 28th.
“It’s been exciting to see them understand their potential, come to the gym and do the daily grind,” Ramirez says. “We’ve been working day in and day out and, having this happen, it’s a nice feeling, but it’s not something that was out of the blue. We’ve been on a steady climb throughout the season.”
The Tigers held a watch party in SECU Arena on Monday, March 22, to see where they would end up. Nikki Borkowski, a junior from Toledo, Ohio, thought it was pretty cool to see the Tigers finally make it as a team.
“I'm grateful that I've been a part of this team, a part of its success and seeing how much we’ve grown,” Borkowski says. “I'm really excited to show everyone all of our hard work. It’s been there throughout this whole season, but I'm really excited for it to be on more of a larger scale.”
This season the Tigers posted five of their 10 ten scores in program history, recorded their highest national qualifying score (NQS) in school history at 196 and defeated their rival Maryland for the first time since the early ‘90s. In fact, that NQS was the basis for their invitation to regionals; the NCAA chooses its top 36 teams based on NQS.
The Tigers were also a force in the Eastern Atlantic Gymnastics League (EAGL), finishing second overall after being predicted to place seventh in the preseason. TU ended the season with more EAGL weekly awards than any other season in history and picked up seven first team All-EAGL awards while adding 11 second team All-EAGL honors.
The Tigers finished third at the EAGL Championships on Saturday, March 20, with the highest championship score in TU’s history (195.875).
Emerson Hurst was the EAGL beam champion, and Allison Zuhlke earned EAGL Rookie of the Year. Assistant coach Ashley Sauer was named EAGL Assistant Coach of the Year, and Ramirez received EAGL Head Coach of the Year honors. Seven gymnasts were named to the EAGL All-Tournament Teams.
“Everybody is contributing. Everybody is a cog in the wheel, and everybody is pulling their own weight and making that wheel go,” Ramirez says. “I’m so proud of this team; they’ve really rocked it this year.”
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The team has even gone viral. During a meet in February, Zuhlke caught the eye of the internet when she debuted a new move on the vault. It was a front handspring onto the board with a tucked tsuk full off the table. The move’s name: The Zuhlke 2.
After breaking records, going viral and making program history, Ramirez is ready to watch his team take the floor one more time.
“I’m so excited they get this opportunity,” he says. “All season long we went out there and proved ourselves. Now it’s a chance for them to go out there and shine and have some fun.”
To stay up to date with Towson University gymnastics, follow their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.