If the gymnastics team is only as good as the competition it's going to face this season, then there's certainly a chance to be the best at the end of the year.
Every team the Gators will face is in the GymInfo Preseason Top 25. During the course of the season, UF will compete against six preseason top-10 teams, including four-time defending NCAA champion Georgia and No. 2-ranked Utah.
"It is a very tough schedule," UF coach Rhonda Faehn said. "It's difficult, just our SEC conference schedule, because it's the hardest conference in the country."
The team opens the season Friday against No. 10 Oklahoma.
It can't come soon enough for the No. 3 ranked Gators, ready to start the season regardless of their strength of schedule.
"We're just all gunning to get out of the gate," gymnast Amanda Castillo said. "We just want to start, we want to get this first competition under our belts so that we can have a building block to the rest of the season."
Although her team has yet to compete, Faehn has the utmost confidence in her gymnasts.
"I think (this season) has great potential," she said. "It's always difficult to be a mind-reader or to foresee the future this early on. What I can tell you right now is that this team has as much potential and as much talent as any of the teams we've had before them."
Faehn isn't oblivious, though, to the youth of this year's team - one-third of the roster is freshmen.
"We need to see how our freshmen become acclimated to the competitive environment, how they handle the pressures," she said.
Faehn is placing her faith in her freshmen, but she will be looking to a core of four to lead this team.
Returning All-Americans Corey Hartung, Melanie Sinclair and Castillo, along with Maranda Smith, will have to be the heavy hitters throughout the season.
Hartung, the only senior on the team, said she is ready for the season to begin.
"It's my senior year, so I'm ready to go," she said. "I want to make it my best and go out with a bang."
Castillo, who will be easing into the season because of a sore foot, will see less action in the opening meet because Faehn hopes to have the strongest team possible for the NCAA Championships at the end of the season.
Faehn realizes, likewise, that she can't use her core four as complete workhorses. The freshmen must lighten the load.
"I've done it before in the gym, and it's the same thing. I've done it a million times," freshman Elizabeth Mahlich said.
There's one major difference, though, between the gymnastics Mahlich and her freshman peers have been doing and UF gymnastics, one thing that Mahlich and the other freshmen haven't done before.
"They're performing for the team now, not just themselves," Hartung said. "If you do a bad performance, or a good performance, or whatever you do in college, it affects the whole team. It affects all 12 of us and every coach and every trainer on this UF gymnastics team."
