FORT WORTH, Texas – Among the gymnastics bluebloods at the NCAA Championship finals, you'll find Utah with nine national titles, Oklahoma with four and Florida with three.
You'll also find the Auburn Tigers, searching for their first national championship while celebrating their first Final Four appearance, an accomplishment that comes as no surprise to Auburn coach Jeff Graba.
"It's relief and excitement at the same time to finally achieve that goal," said Graba, in his 12th season on the Plains. "Our goal has always been to be at or close to our best on the final night and have an opportunity to win the national championship. With a young team, I want them to embrace their opportunity right now."
When Auburn survived Thursday's semifinals and advanced to Saturday's finals, it did so with freshmen providing nine of the Tigers' 24 routines while seniors competed in five.
"It's a huge deal for us," Graba said. "We're very talented, we're a really good team that belongs here but we're not the experienced team that these others are. Are we capable? Yes, but the experience we're going to gain from this is immense."Freshman Sara Hubbard earned All-America honors on vault
Freshman Sara Hubbard joined freshman all-arounders Sunisa Lee and Sophia Groth in Auburn's vault lineup, equaling her career high of 9.9 to earn All-America honors by finishing eighth among all of the gymnasts from both semifinal sessions.
"Making All-American is amazing," said Hubbard, who joined Lee and Derrian Gobourne as first-team All-Americans while Groth earned second-team honors. "I've always loved to vault so to have that title and say I'm an All-American is amazing.
"We all knew that we had the potential. Being able to show all of our potential last night was really great to show everybody that we could do it."
"She brings a personality and a character to the team that we need," Graba said. "She's really talented, obviously, but she's also fun, light-hearted, doesn't let the moment get too big for her and shines on the biggest stages. The future is so bright for her and for us with her."
On the eve of Saturday's championship showdown, which ABC will televise at noon CT, the Tigers returned to Dickies Arena for a half-hour of stretching before an optional afternoon excursion to the Fort Worth Zoo.
The bluebloods best be ready on Saturday. The new bloods are coming.
"I'm excited to have this opportunity," Hubbard said. "Everybody out here is obviously so talented. It's going to be great to be surrounded by everybody."
"This has been a long process to build to this," Graba said. "Gymnastics is a sport that takes a while to get the program where you want it to be.
"I want to thank everybody for supporting us all the way here. Now to me it's money in the bank. We're going to go out there and let it all hang out. But no matter how we finish, we're going to get better from it."NCAA champion: Suni Lee won the beam title Thursday helping Auburn advance to Saturday's team final
"We were on 🔥- the energy was great."@AuburnGym freshman Sara Hubbard earned first-team All-America honors Thursday with a 9.9 on vault, helping AU advance to the #NCAAGym Final Four.
— Jeff Shearer (@jeff_shearer) April 15, 2022
Auburn competes Saturday for the national championship.🏆
"So much fun."#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/LxpnY4WfGU
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer