Champions GREAT MOMENTS IN ALABAMA GYMNASTICS HISTORY Alabama is competing at its third NCAA Championship on April 12-13, 1985, when junior Penney Hauschild explodes into a Crimson Tide legend by winning the NCAA All-Around Championship in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the first time that an athlete from Utah fails to win the all-around title. The Pennsylvania native also wins the uneven bars title. Hauschild is the first individual NCAA champion in Alabama gymnastics history. Her all-around total is an NCAA Championships record. Hauschild will go on to win four NCAA titles during her legendary career, repeating as all-around champion in 1986 and adding the floor exercise title to her resume that same year. Eleven gymnasts and a lifetime of dreams come together on April 22, 1988, as Alabama wins its first NCAA team championship. Alabama scores an NCAA Championship record 190.05 in front of a rowdy handful of Tide faithful in Salt Lake City. Utah is second followed by UCLA, LSU, Georgia and Florida. The Tide is led by four All-Americans – senior Kathy Bilodeau, sophomores Marie Robbins and Cheri Way, and freshman Tina Rinker. Senior Alli Beldon, sophomores Ali Blumberg and Tracey Tillman and freshmen Wendy Anderson, Kim Masters and Susie Pierce round out the Tide’s championship roster.
All-American Barbara Mack – a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, the first Alabama gymnast to win the Paul W. Bryant Award, an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winner and a two-time Region Champion – caps a brilliant Crimson Tide career by becoming the first Alabama gymnast to win the AMF American Award on April 13, 1985.
Crimson Tide legend Penney Hauschild caps a brilliant Crimson Tide career with her second consecutive Honda Broderick Award on January 11, 1986. The Honda Broderick Award is given annually to the nation’s best gymnast. Hauschild’s career includes two NCAA All-Around championships, an NCAA Uneven Bars title and an NCAA Floor Exercise title. Hauschild earned 10 All-America honors during her storied career. She earned five NCAA Central Regional titles and one SEC all-around crown.
No one may have known it at the time, but July 1, 1978, marks the start of something extremely special as the Crimson Tide begins its rise toward becoming one of the most successful programs in the history of collegiate athletics when Sarah Campbell becomes Alabama gymnastics’ fifth head coach in five years. She immediately hires David Patterson as her assistant coach. The rest, as they say, is history.
Julie Garrett becomes Alabama’s first All-American on April 4, 1982. Garrett paces the Tide to a fourth-place finish at the 1982 AIAW National Championships before attending the first NCAA Championship as an individual. Undaunted by her first NCAA appearance, Garrett earns All-America recognition on the uneven bars.
HISTORY 88 ALABAMA GYMNASTICS
History didn’t record the first meeting, the first practice or the first vault – those dates are lost in time – but the first meet, the first time The University of Alabama put forth a group of young women wearing crimson and white leotards came on January 10, 1975. Alabama opens at home, falling to Georgia College 83.75-65.80. And with that, the program that will become one of the most celebrated in collegiate athletics is underway.
Alabama wins its first NCAA Regional title on March 26, 1983, earning its first trip to the NCAA Championships which will be held at Salt Lake City, Utah, two weeks later. Sarah and David Patterson’s first recruiting class helps take the Tide to the top of the South Region, downing the region’s until-then dominant team, Florida, the meet’s host.
On May 27, 1987, Julie Estin becomes the first athlete from Alabama to be honored as the Southeastern Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Estin also earns NCAA and SEC Postgraduate Scholarships, which she puts to good use. In July 1996, Dr. Julie Vaughn set up practice in Tuscaloosa as a pediatrician.