The 2007 Gym Dogs came home Sunday from Salt Lake City with a third consecutive NCAA Championship trophy and a place in women’s gymnastics history.

With a victory in Friday night’s Super Six, the Gym Dogs became the second team in the history of the sport to win three straight national titles and the first in more than two decades, since Utah accomplished the feat from 1982-86.

The Gym Dogs’ score of 197.850 was enough to win by a comfortable .600 over the host Utah Utes. The Super Six field also included Florida (197.225), Stanford (196.825), Nebraska (195.975) and UCLA (196.925).

Junior Katie Heenan summed up the team’s mindset heading into Saturday’s championship.

“Tonight was about staying in the zone and staying the course,” she said.

The Gym Dogs stormed to the top of the leaderboard with a 49.425 on bars, paced by three scores of 9.90 from Courtney Kupets, Marcia Newby and Tiffany Tolnay. That score gave Georgia a .05 lead over last year’s runner-up Utah through the first event.

Utah made up that difference in the second rotation, as Georgia struggled with the beam, a discipline in which the Gym Dogs are top-ranked in the nation. Freshman Courtney McCool highlighted Georgia’s 49.325 team score with a career-high 9.95.

Head coach Suzanne Yoculan confessed she looked at the other teams’ scores at the midpoint of the competition to see her team tied with the Utes.

“I try to stick with the plan, with the team, and not look at the scores,” said Yoculan. “But it’s really hard with that overhead (scoreboard) up there.”

“I knew the score after two rotations. We didn’t say anything to the team, and I didn’t know if they knew or not.”

Watching or not, the Gym Dogs received a much-needed rest during the fourth rotation and then made their move on the floor exercise, posting five scores of 9.90 or above for a team total of 49.575. This gave Georgia a .375-point lead over second-place Florida heading into the vault, the team’s strongest event this season.

With victory within reach, the Gym Dogs put away any chance of a Gators or Utes comeback with a season-high 49.525 score on the vault. Courtney Kupets, Tiffany Tolnay, Megan Dowlen and Katie Heenan all turned in scores of 9.90 or higher with Heenan’s 9.95 topping the list.

Heenan was unfazed by the Utes’ strong showing in the middle of the competition.

“The whole meet we were in tunnel vision, and it was about us. We went out there and captured that arena and made it ours,” Heenan said.

“This whole season has been amazing. We fought to the last second, and we fought for everything out there.”

The Gym Dogs held at least a share of the evening’s high score in each of the four events. The trio of Newby, Tolnay and Kupets on the bars, McCool on the beam, Kupets on the floor and Heenan on the vault made it a Gym Dogs sweep on Saturday night.

The championship weekend was once again extra sweet for sophomore Courtney Kupets, who captured the NCAA All-Around Title for the second straight season during Thursday night’s preliminary competition.

Kupets became the second Gym Dog to accomplish that feat in consecutive years, after Kim Arnold did so in 1997 and 1998. Kupets’ overall score of 39.750 matched her 2006 championship score and is tied for the second-highest total in NCAA history.

Kupets’ All-Around title is the sixth in Gym Dogs history, while the 2007 NCAA Team National Championship is the program’s eighth title, placing Georgia second all-time behind Utah’s ten gymnastics championships. The Gym Dogs finished their 2007 season with an overall record of 31-2-1 and thirdstraight National Championship. The Super Six will be held in Athens next year as the Gym Dogs attempt to make it four straight.