Special Quote of the Week- Dominique Dawes

Today, in honor of Black History Month, we are going to start a month-long series of quotes from African-American athletes, past and present.

In may sports, an athlete can still compete at age 34, but that's not the case with gymnastics!

Nevertheless, Dominique Dawes, who won Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, is still very active in the public speaking circuit.

Her alma mater, the University of Maryland (Dawes did not compete for the school) faces their EAGL rivals from the University of North Carolina on Saturday. The meet between the Terps and the 'Heels will be at 7:00 p.m. in Chapel Hill.

Last week, Maryland finished third (in a four-school meet) in Ann Arbor, Mich., in which the host Wolverines won. But, the Terps had standout performances from Kesley Cofsky, who scored a 9.8 on bars. Gymnasts Kaitlin Joseph and Ally Krikorian scored a 9.7 each on the same apparatus.

As for UNC, the 'Heels beat William and Mary at home last week with solid scores from Morgan Evans, Elizabeth Durkac (who happens to be from Yorktown, Va., which is near the campus of William and Mary) and Emily Cornwell. Alas, our favorite Tarheel gymnast Christine Nguyen graduated last year.

Dawes has been very vocal about the need for young women to view themselves positively and her quote here certainly reflects that:

"I found through research that between 50 and 70 percent of young girls who describe themselves as overweight are actually normal weight."

More ACC Mascots

We thought we'd get all the ACC mascots in (the rest are on my other blog "The Daily Vampire").

In my rush to get the first entries up, I forgot to mention that the University of North Carolina's women's gymnastics team, which is actually having a better year than the UNC men's basketball team (I wonder if UNC gymnastics coach Derek Galvin has brought this up the last time he ran into Roy Williams ........yeah, probably not) will be hosting West Virginia University in Chapel Hill. The meet starts at 1 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

Despite losing to the highly-ranked University of Florida team in Gainesville last week, the 'Heels gymnastics team scored impressively well.

Kara Wright, a senior from Virginia Beach, was named EAGL gymnast of the week for her 39.2 score during the meet with the Gators.

Her teammate Christine Nguyen, a senior from Plano, Tex., has also won that honor several times.

As far as men's basketball is concerned, I would love to see the Virginia Tech Hokies or the North Carolina State Wolfpack win it all, but yeah....of course, Duke will win it all, but top-seeded Syracuse fell to Georgetown today at the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden.

But, Coach K is not known for choking......well except for that time they fell to VCU in the opening round of the NCAA tourney, but I don't expect that to happen in Greensboro.

NC State Women's Gymnastics Team Upsets Nebraska.

I was at the NCAA gymnastics meet held at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, NC, on the North Carolina State University campus where the home-team Wolfpack upset tenth ranked Nebraska. The University of North Carolina was also at the meet, and came in third though Christine Nguyen (pictured) won the all-around competition.

According to the Wolfpacks' gymnastics team web site, there were 3,721 fans on-hand to witness the most impressive win in the program's history (It should be noted that the Wolfpack gymnast pictured here who we believe to be Ashley Shepard was on last year's team).

The Wolfpacks' coach Mark Stevenson said he was very pleased with his team's performance.

"I'm really excited about how the meet turned out," Stevenson said. "We beat Nebraska for the first time ever and they are a top ten team."

The Wolfpack scored a seson best 9.875 as freshman Rachel Fincham posted that same score on the bars event. The 'Pack were also helped out with strong performances from Jess Panza, Brooke Barr and Becca Teich. Barr and Teich finished second and third respectively in the all-around competition behind Nguyen.

As for the visiting Cornhuskers (we tried to find an image of a gymnast, but alas we had to settle for one of the team's mascots!), coach Dan Kendig told Brendan Carl of "The Daily Nebraskan" that he gave his team a pep talk going into the fourth rotation when they realized they were down to the Wolfpack by a considerable margin.

But, in the end, it simply wasn't enough to overcome.

"I wish we had a better showing, but we will live to see a better day," Kendig told "The Daily Nebraskan."

For the 'Huskers, senior Kylie Stone gave a good performance and she told the newspaper that her team stayed tough in spite of a poor balance beam performance.

As for the Tarheels, the loss featured many positives as Nguyen won her fourth all-around title which prompted her to being named EAGL (east coast collegiate gymnastics conference) Gymnast of the Week as she score an impressive 39.375 in Raleigh.

'Heels coach Derek Galvin told the UNC women's gymnastic's team's web site that he was delighted with ther performances from his team which included a 9.800 on the balance beam from stand-out gymnast Kara Wright.

"Going into this week our focus was on bringing our beam routines up to the level of the other events," Galvin said. "We did that and we surpassed them."

The Wolfpack stay in Raleigh to face the always tough Pitt Panthers on Saturday night. Fans who bring in two books can get in for free as part of a literacy program that the team is sponsoring.