Alabama
NCAA Championships
Geralen Stack-Eaton Wins NCAA Floor Exercise Championship
4/17/2011 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
April 17, 2011
CLEVELAND - Less than 24 hours after winning its fifth NCAA team championship, the Alabama gymnastics team picked up individual title No. 22 when junior Geralen Stack-Eaton won the NCAA Floor Exercise Championship here in the Wolstein Center Sunday.
"Obviously, it was a really good weekend for our team," Stack-Eaton said. "Today was just about having fun. Bars didn't go as well as I would have liked, but it was really nice to end on a good note on the floor."
Stack-Eaton scored a 9.9375 to win Alabama's fifth national title on the floor with her nearest competition scoring 9.9. She earned the win after starting the night with a fall on the uneven bars that knocked her out of contention on that event.
"I'm so proud of what Geralen did and how she was able to mentally drop the uneven bars and earn the floor exercise championship," UA head coach Sarah Patterson said. "I think she has one of the great routines. Her floor routine was beautiful. She's one of the reasons we're here as team champions, and I couldn't be more proud of her."
Overall, it was a tremendous weekend for the Horsham, Pa., native. In addition to earning four first-team All-American honors, she scored 9.925 or better on the floor exercise all three nights of the championships. She finished third overall in the all-around, which is decided off of Friday's results.
In individual finals there are six judges on each event and the score is determined by taking out the high and low scores and averaging the remaining four, except on the vault where a gymnast must do two vaults and the average of those two determines the final score.
Stack-Eaton was one of six UA gymnasts competing for individual honors on Sunday. Senior Kayla Hoffman took second with a 9.8875 while freshman Kim Jacob was eighth with a 9.8125 on the balance beam. Freshman Sarah DeMeo was third on the uneven bars after scoring a 9.8625.
Hoffman was second in the all-around on Friday and finished with a trio of All-American honors on the weekend and five for her career.
There were four UA gymnasts in the vault field, with Hoffman leading the way, taking fourth place with a 9.8125. Sophomore Marissa Gutierrez was fifth with a 9.8 while sophomore Ashley Sledge and Stack-Eaton were tied for seventh with matching scores of 9.7938.
All the individual event finalists earned first team All-American honors in the events they competed on while freshman Diandra Milliner earned second team All-American honors on the balance beam.
Players Mentioned
