Missouri gymnastics team in full swing at Cat Classic

The Missouri gymnastics team may be preparing for its largest home meet of the year, but that didn’t stop coach Rob Drass from canceling Thursday’s practice.

“You don’t ever want to go six days (of gymnastics) in a row because it really tends to mentally and physically beat you up,” Drass said.

“This time of the year the physical’s important, but the mental is almost as important.”

The large home meet is the 27th annual Cat Classic, a four-team meet that includes teams from Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan and William & Mary. The events will run simultaneously, creating four possible places for the eyes to roam.

“The team championship on Friday night is a circus,” Drass said. “It’s akin to Beauty and the Beast where there’s four events going on at once, not just three. And your head’s on a swivel, and you’re just watching something that’s nonstop action. I think there’s something for everybody in the weekend.”

It was originally started as a competition to feature teams with only cat mascots such as the Tigers, Wildcats or Panthers. The Classic has since opened to any school, feline name or not, but still retains some unique features.

“This is the oldest invitational in the country,” Drass said. “And the original premise was it was going to be run just like NCAA Finals, and it still is to this day. So this really helps us prepare for NCAA Championships.”

On Friday night the gymnasts compete in the regular team competition.

But Saturday night is different.

The top eight to 10 scoring gymnasts in each event advance to the event finals.

“The first night is definitely all about the team,” senior gymnast Whitney Crater said. “And you go out there and try to get the highest team score we can because that’s what we’re all about. The second night is the night where you pull out skills you wouldn’t necessarily risk doing in a regular night.”

The story line for the Tigers won’t differ from any other meet this year: The key is to hit beam. But after focusing on beam during the previous week’s practices with multiple competitive scenarios, the coaches took a different approach to how the gymnasts practiced this week.

“We’ve almost kind of taken a backseat approach this week and said, ‘OK, we’ll have one intersquad.’ We’re just going to work beam like there’s not a problem and try to have some confidence in our athletes and know that they’re just in a rut, and they’ll come out of it,” Drass said. “I really don’t think there’s any major issue there, it’s just a mind thing — it’s a monkey on your back.”

The Classic will be Missouri’s first meet since the Regional Qualifying Score rankings came out on Monday. The Tigers are ranked 17th. To calculate the RQS, the team’s top six scores of the season are selected, of which three have to come from away meets. The highest total is eliminated, and the remaining five scores are averaged.

But Drass said the rankings won’t affect the gymnasts’ mentality going into the competition.

“Is it in the back of your mind? Yeah, it’s always in the back of your mind,” he said. “But it’s not something we can do anything about so to give it much attention is not really worth it.”