After 20 Years, 1988 Championship Team Still Significant
2/21/2008 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
Marie Robbins remembers the curtain.
It hung, heavy and black in front of what is now press row in Coleman Coliseum. From ceiling to floor it draped, covering up one-fourth of the seats in the arena with its massive screen-printed University seal and black fabric. It was 1988, and the University of Alabama gymnastics team had just upgraded from its previous home in Foster Auditorium to the floor of the Coliseum.
Even with an improving record and increased attendance each year, the verdict was still out on the Alabama gymnastics program and its pair of young coaches, and it was decided by University officials to have the curtain hang at all gymnastics meets, forcing the crowd to sit on just three sides of the arena, giving the appearance of a more full auditorium while covering up the Coliseum’s empty seats.
The year before, Alabama had finished third in the SEC and fourth in the country at the NCAA Championships ?? a far cry from where the program had been just a few years before, when the two college-aged coaches took over a program that had been through five coaches in as many years and had never had a winning season. For Sarah and David Patterson, just bringing their program from the bottom of competition to the pinnacle at the NCAA Championships in just nine years was validation enough that they were doing things the right way.
But the 1988 season would bring its own validation??the year before, the University of Georgia, Alabama’s long-time gymnastics rival, had won the 1987 NCAA Championship. In 1988, Alabama would sweep all postseason competition, finishing first at the SEC Championships, the NCAA Regionals, and the NCAA Championships to capture the school’s first gymnastics title, just 10 years into Patterson’s career.
“While all of our championship teams are special, that one set the benchmark because it validated our efforts that we could have a balanced program,” Patterson said. “We could be committed to the individual, committed to education and committed to championships the way we believed in it with all the things that are important to us, and we could win. The core beliefs we have for our program were there, and we built on that.
“They were the first ones. They didn’t ride on charter planes. They didn’t compete in front of 15,000 people. They weren’t recognizable all over campus. But I think they were the backbone of what this program has become.”
In the 20 years since Alabama’s first national title, the Tide gymnastics team has won three more, capturing the NCAA Team Championship in 1991, 1996 and 2002. But the ’88 team was different, in part, because it was being led by two coaches who weren’t much older than the athletes they were mentoring. In 1979, Patterson had taken over the program at 22, and David Patterson was still a student at Alabama while working as an assistant coach.
Their age, however, made them easier to relate to, team members say, and fostered a sense of family on the team, which brought everyone closer together throughout the season.
“It was kind of weird that I had no clue at the time that Sarah was only 10 years older than me and had only been there six years,” said Alli Kustoff, a member of the 1988 championship team. “Here I was thinking she was like my parent and had the experience and knew what to do. It’s kind of amazing, that she’s only 10 years older than me and you can see how much she’s accomplished.”
Kustoff is one of a number of athletes from the 1988 team who has kept in touch with her former Alabama teammates throughout the last 20 years. A mother of four now living in San Antonio, she and her family are able to make it back to the University about once a year, either for the team’s alumni weekend or a sporting event.
Now, as a mother looking at future schools for her own children, Kustoff takes into consideration the values and experiences she felt during her days at Alabama, and the principles she learned from her four years under the Pattersons.
“It was unbelievable,” she said. “You didn’t realize what you had accomplished, and no one could tell us what that felt like because no one had done that before. Now, when I look at a school for my daughter and she wants to play collegiate tennis, how do I find a school that will treat her like Sarah and David treated me, that she’ll want to go back to for 30 years, that her kids will want to be a part of? It makes deciding on a school really difficult, and I don’t know how I was so lucky.”
Marie Robbins, now a senior women’s administrator in the Alabama athletic department, said thinking back 20 years to the 1988 championship still seems as vivid as ever, and that watching the program evolve over the last two decades he helped put the night in perspective.
“It really doesn’t feel like 20 years,” she said. “The memories of that night are still so vivid. I can more or less replay the whole night and others can replay it to a greater extent. I think [Sarah and David Patterson] had come close prior to 1988 and were knocking on the door and probably to that point, they had started to question whether they could lead a team to a championship with their principles, and we were able to validate it for them.”
And when she thinks about the championship, something else comes to mind ?? a certain black curtain that covered the empty seats of the gymnastics arena, and a championship that confirmed the sport’s place at the University of Alabama.
“I remember that we had the curtain all the way through the ’88 season,” Robbins said. “And the next year, the curtain came down.”
