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■ FANFARE
The Georgia men’s golf team finished third at the Billy
Hitchcock Intercollegiate Tournament with a three-day total of
874, nine shots off the pace of LSU, who won the event. Marc
Spencer led the way, finishing three-under par.
The Red and Black • Monday, April 25^ 1994 • 7 «
SPORTS
GYM: Yoculan’s team suffers
falls, setbacks at nationals
From page 1
Championship,” Yoculan said.
In the 1989 Championships,
Georgia played the role of spoil
er. The Gym Dogs hosted the
event that year and also came
from the fifth seed to beat the
favorite, UCLA, by .05. This
loss also brought back memo
ries of the 1992 Championships
when Georgia went in as the fa
vorite but was beaten because
of costly falls on the uneven
bars. The next year, Yoculan
said that her team was on a
mission to avenge themselves.
They did so by winning the na
tional title and setting an
NCAA record score with a
198.00.
Yoculan and graduating se
nior Kelly Macy both believe
that next year could hold the
same results.
“It can be just like last year,"
Macy said. “We have a very tal
ented team coming back.”
Georgia will lose Macy and
Hope Spivey-Sheeley, but re
turn a very strong team. They
will also add highly-regarded
recruits Kim Arnold and Julie
Ballard.
“Yeah, next year could be a
lot like last year,” Yoculan said.
“The upperclassmen (Agina
Simpkins, Nneka Logan and
Andrea Dewey) are already
looking ahead to next year.”
This year’s meet went back
and forth right up until the last
event, the beam. Georgia led
Utah by .625 and needed a team
score of 48.575 on the beam to
catch up with Alabama, which
finished the meet with a bye.
“This was certainly one of
the best competitions ever for
the National Championship,”
Yoculan said. “The level of gym
nastics was as high as I have
ever seen.”
“It was right there in our
hands going into the beam,”
Macy said. “We just had a mind
blank, and that was enough to
throw away the championship.”
Georgia had a bye just before
the beam, and both Yoculan and
Macy said they would have bet
“$1 million” that the team
would have hit on the beam and
won the title. However, just be
fore the team started the beam,
junior Agina Simpkins, who had
her hand slammed in a car door
on the way to the meet, suffered
severe leg cramps. Simkins
competed but was taken to the
hospital right after the meet
was over to receive fluids.
The subsequent delay may
have distracted the Lady
Bulldogs, because Georgia’s two
competitors, freshman Leah
Brown and Leslie Angeles, fell.
‘It can be like last
year. We have a very
talented team com
ing back.’
- Suzanne Yoculan,
coach of the Gym
Dogs
“I told Leah and Leslie that I
take full responsibility for the
mistakes they made,” Yoculan
said. “It is my job as head coach
to get them ready, and I didn’t
do that. I think both of them
will grow because of these mis
takes.”
Angeles was scheduled to
compete on the beam before the
meet, but Yoculan told Macy
that if she wanted to take
Angeles’ place she could.
“I told Suzanne that, if I got
up there, there was no way I
would miss, but I knew if Leslie
hit she would get a higher
score,” Macy said. “I told
Suzanne to go ahead and put
her in because she was (hitting
her routine in warm-ups).”
Georgia still had a shot at
the title, but, when Simpkins
fell, Georgia’s chances were
through.
Bars champ Lori Strong (left) and Coach Suzanne Yoculan
Spivey-Sheeley wins floor title,-
captures diamond ring in bet
By JOSH KENDALL
Staff Writer
SALT LAKE CITY - At the goad
ing of her teammate Lori Strong
who won the national bars title,
Hope Spivey-Sheeley told of an ul
terior motive behind her 1994
NCAA Floor Championship.
“My husband and I made a
bet,” she said, grinning from ear
to ear.
“I have been selfish and want
ed a bigger diamond ring,”
Spivey-Sheeley said. “So we bet a
bigger diamond ring on my win
ning tonight, and he will be very
poor, I assure you.”
Competing in her last meet in
a Georgia leotard, Spivey-Sheeley
scored the 27th perfect 10 of her
career to win the title outright.
She finishes her career with more
perfect marks than any other
school, except Utah.
“It wasn’t really about the
ring,” she said. “It was just some
thing else to go for. It was really
special.”
Spivey-Sheeley’s husband,
Dale, said that he knew his wife
would win when he saw a moose
on his first-ever ski trip, earlier
on Saturday. Spivey-Sheeley’s
nickname is Moose, and Sheeley,
who still has several battle
wounds from his tumbles on the
slopes, said that convinced him.
“The moose was the omen,”
Sheeley said.
Asked if the extra money for
the new ring was worth the cham
pionship, Sheeley replied “defi
nitely.”
“Now 1 have to stick to it be
cause everybody knows about it,”
he said.
Strong actually tied for the
1994 National Uneven Bars
Championship.
After placing second in the un
even bars’ national finals last
year to teammate Agina
Simpkins, Strong will share the
championship with Michigan’s
Beth Wymer and Utah’s Sandy
Wool sey.
“It was a great feeling,” Strong
said. “I was amongst some great
athletes who share the title."
Durham signs top backcourt player Davis
By MARK SCHLABACH
Sports Editor
The Georgia basketball team signed its
first recruit of the recruiting period as Katu
Davis, one of the country’s top junior college
backcourt players signed a national letter-of
intent to play for Durham’s Dogs next season.
“Katu is the kind of guard you don’t put a
number on,” said Georgia head coach Hugh
Durham. “He has demonstrated he can play
both positions. The thing I really like about
him is his ability to create his own shot and
also create shots for his teammates.”
Davis, a 6-foot-2, 180-pound native of
Detroit, Mich., earned second-team JUCO All-
American honors last season when he led Polk
Community College in Winterhaven, Fla., to a
30-7 record and a berth in the national junior
college tournament.
He averaged 24. 3 points, 5.1 rebounds and
6.2 assists as a sophomore at Polk. He ulti
mately chose the Bulldogs over this year’s na
tional champions, Arkansas.
“Katu is the best all-around ^uard I have
coached here,” said Polk head coach Josh
Giles. “He is a very
good all-around basket
ball player. He is an ex
cellent defensive player
and anticipates very
well. He can distribute
the ball and make ev
eryone around him a
better player. Katu is a
very unselfish player.”
He could provide the
Dogs with a much-
needed shooter next
season. He connected
on 52 percent of his
field goals overall and Hugh Durham
41 percent of his three-
pointers. He hit five
shots with less than eight seconds left in the
game to lead Polk to five victories during a 25-
5 start his sophomore season.
Many recruiting experts and opposing
coaches have said he brings back memories of>
Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, the magical guard:
with the Baltimore Bullets and the New York
Knicks.
The former prep standout at Northern High^
School in Detroit was selected as the Most-!
Valuable Player in the Florida junior college*
ranks this past season. *.
He scored more than 40 points in five difC;
ferent games. He averaged 22 points a gam^
for Polk during his freshman year while being
named all-conference and all-state. As a sev
nior at Northern High School, he averaged 21n
points a game, including a season-high 53^,
points in one game. >
While the Bulldogs signed one of the toj>,
available point guards in the nation, they
were dealt a serious blow to their recruiting
efforts when Marist High School’s Matt
Harpring signed with Georgia Tech on Friday.
Harpring was named the Georgia class
AAA Co-Player of the Year after he led Marist
to the state championship. He averaged 24.7'.
points a game last year.
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