At the conclusion of last year’s gymnastics season, head coach Jay Clark locked the Gym Dogs out of the gym.

Was he sending a message to his team, the first Georgia squad in 27 years to fail to make nationals? Yes, but the beauty of the message was in its subtlety.

Every season, the Gym Dogs will always find locked doors to their practice gym, but usually it is at the end of May, even early June, but never as early as last year.

“We wanted them out,” Clark said. “We wanted them to have time to let that loss sink in.”

Junior Kat Ding had no idea what do to with herself, so she reluctantly went to the pool.

“I was like, well I guess I can go to the pool, but it was strange and I didn’t like it at all,” Ding said.

While it was difficult for each Gym Dog to be banned from her gym, which had served as a metaphorical home since December, the girls began to discover the method behind Clark’s unique decision.

“It’s reverse psychology, you know,” sophomore Christa Tanella said. “If he had made us stay in the gym we would’ve hated it, but by forcing us out and not letting us in, we really wanted to be in there … and it made us all want to work really hard over the summer.”

And with the start of voluntary workouts two weeks ago and mandatory practices on Sept. 13, Clark’s subtle message has appeared to sink in with his student-athletes.

“I think we all felt that we were supposed to be in [the gym] because we didn’t know any other way,” senior Cassidy McComb said. “But they wanted us out of there because we needed time to rejuvenate and to let what happened sink in, and it was just awful. But getting us out of the gym was probably the best for us.”

With the bitter disappointment of last season still fresh in his mind, when several of the Gym Dogs simply wore down, Clark said he decided to up the ante on fall conditioning. And the team has certainly felt it.

“It’s really been hard,” Tanella said. “I don’t remember a lot of it from last year, which concerns me, because maybe I blocked it out. This year it’s definitely hard, but it’s a good hard. It feels good being pushed that hard.”

Yet, the Gym Dogs aren’t complaining, because as Ding put it, the end to last season continues to serve as “a jabbing needle in the back of our minds that says, ‘Hey, remember me.’”

And it’s a feeling none of the returnees will ever forget, because they never want to be that miserable again.

Injury Update

Sophomore Shayla Worley, who had a promising freshman season derailed with an ankle injury, underwent surgery over the summer.

She is “as healthy as she’s ever gonna be” and will train and compete for the rest of her career with what Clark called “a glass ankle.”

And two of the incoming freshman Gym Dogs, Bekah Bennetts and Cat Hires, are already on crutches from injuries sustained over the summer, but both are expected to be ready to compete by the start of the 2011 season.