Gymnastics is supposed to be a sport of finely-tuned performances, perfected execution and refined elegance.

It’s supposed to be a very serious sport.

Abby Stack didn’t get the memo.

If anything, Stack, one of Georgia gymnastics’ four seniors, is a serious goofball, the consummate practitioner of anything ridiculous, random or wholly inappropriate.

“She’s almost cartoonish,” said freshman Gym Dog Amber Trani. “She’s very out there. She’s not afraid to do anything whether she looks like an idiot or not. She loves to have fun and make people smile.”

Things can no doubt get a little stressful for a record-setting gymnastics program, but as the Gym Dogs prepare for a run at a fifth straight national title, Stack is there as the poster child for comic relief.

“She’s the jokester. She has so many jokes and she remembers them and she tells them perfect and we’re like, ‘Really Abby? You’re really going to tell that joke right now?’ senior Courtney Kupets said. “And sometimes you really need that, you need that kind of humor every once in a while. Even if you have to tell her, ‘That’s not appropriate, Abby.’”

“She’ll do these skateboard moves when we’re on vault like across the tumble track,” junior Courtney McCool said. “And she can do any sport ever. She can ski, she can skateboard, she can play ball. She just adds so much character and it helps us relax . She just brings a lot of happiness to the team.

When Stack came out as “The Creature,” a bright green alien-like being created by putting her arms and legs through the same holes of a sweatshirt, at the Gym Dogs’ Sneak-A-Peek last month, her teammates weren’t surprised – she had done the same at practice earlier in the fall.

It was simply more of the same old Abby.

“She walks into practice the other day and she’s just dead serious, she’s dead serious and she goes, ‘I cannot believe it, a cop pulled me over on the way here, I cannot believe it,’” coach Suzanne Yoculan said.

“I’m like, ‘Abby, what are you doing, speeding again?’ She said, ‘No, he pulled me over, and I said what’s the problem? Is it because I’ve got two guns and a six pack?’ And she pulls up her shirt and shows us her stomach.”

All silliness aside, Stack is a leader on this Gym Dogs squad.

The polar opposite of the now-departed Katie Heenan, a quiet, disciplined leader, Stack competes on all events besides beam.

But she does her best balancing act to keep her penchant for goofiness and her team’s need for leadership in check.

“She’s always upbeat, she’s always positive, always positive,” Yoculan said. “She’s so secure, she has such a great self-esteem and she’s so confident. She’s a huge team player. She has been so huge this fall in terms of her leadership for our team.”

“There’s a balance but it’s not hard on this team because there’s so many people that are pushed and are hard on themselves so they need somebody that’s just goofy,” Stack said. “And I’d say the majority of the time I can provide that for them.”

Unlike a lot of her teammates, Stack has no individual NCAA titles to her name.

She’s never been an All-American, and she’s never been to the Olympics.

But it’s her determination and perseverance that make her a Georgia-caliber gymnast and an irreplaceable asset to her team.

“We all might say, ‘Oh, conditioning,’ like it’s a bad thing,” Kupets said. “But she’ll just pop in there and make sure that everyone just has a positive attitude and keeps on going. And it’s great, because it’s contagious. It’s needed.”

“She’s kind of like the Energizer Bunny,” said teammate and roommate Paige Burns. “She got a kitten for Christmas from her fiancée and it just runs around and bounces off the walls. It’s just like her.”

Determination is a trait Stack said she’s had since she was a small child growing up in Matthews. N.C.

“I had a nickname when I was really little and it was Buster,” she said. “I would just throw any trick and I would fall, and I would get right back up and keep going. That’s just always kind of how I’ve been since I was little. I would chuck and go and see from there.”

When the Gym Dogs kick off their 2009 season against West Virginia tonight at Stegeman Coliseum, it will be all business.

But whether it was her “Inspector Gadget” floor routine last year or her new “Speed Racer” performance (complete with a slow-motion driving sequence) this season, Stack will be bringing the fun to everyone in the building – fans, teammates and judges alike.

“She just makes the goofiest moves even goofier and you can’t help but smile,” McCool said. “I don’t know how the judges even judge her routine because they’re laughing so hard. It just makes you happy.”