Jay Clark was not happy with his team earlier this week at practice.

“We competed like a squirrel that couldn’t decide which side of the road to go on and got run over,” said Clark, the head coach of the Georgia gymnastics team.

As the Gym Dogs team got back in the gym to prepare for their meet against LSU on Jan. 28, they weren’t focusing as much on their physical gymnastics, but the mentality that went into preforming those skills.

The Gym Dogs are preparing for their next match against LSU on Jan. 28. The team is hoping its kinks on the floor will be worked out by meet time. KRISTY DENSMORE/Staff

“The gymnastics has been there for a couple of weeks now,” Clark said. “We’ve got to get a much more aggressive attack and intentional mindset. We’ve got to be the squirrel that doesn’t make any changes in what he’s focused on because nine times out of 10, he makes it.”

There may have still been problems on the floor, but the main issue was the team’s mindset throughout the competition.

“I think we have enough strengths on all four events to compete with — and beat virtually anyone — if we’ve got the right mindset,” Clark said. “When you get timid and indecisive … bad things can happen.”

Besides needing to improve their mindset, the Gym Dogs are still in search of the perfect floor lineup.

“We have a lot of people training [floor],” freshman Chelsea Davis said. “We’re just still trying to find those people that are going to go out there and hit.”

Although the team has “flat-lined” since their strong start to the season, they still go into every practice working on the same things.

“We’re definitely going to do the same things in practice,” Davis said. “But when we get to the meet we’ll focus on being more aggressive and staying loose.”

The Gym Dogs aren’t the only team improving, as the Tigers started off scoring just a 192.550, but have steadily gotten better and ended up and posted a 196.325 in their latest meet against No. 1 Arkansas.

“They’ve been improving every meet,” Davis said. “I know they’re going to bring a strong competition.”

They may have started off slow, but the Tigers seem to preform to the best of their abilities when faced against Georgia.

“They are an enormously talented athletic team that has a lot of power,” Clark said. “When they hit – and I think they will because when you look at the past two years they’ve gotten everyone’s season best performances –­ they’re going to come in here and put a solid meet together.”

The Tigers are only ranked No. 17, but when you “throw rankings out the window”, Clark sees LSU as a top 10 team.

“We think they’ll come in here and give a good performance,” Clark said. “It should be a great meet for our fans, and some good gymnastics should happen this weekend.”

In the end, the team has to “stay on the same page at the same time” if they want to be in contention for another victory.

“We don’t have that great mistake eraser or erasers at the end of every lineup where you know you’ve got two automatic 9.95s waiting in the wings,” Clark said. “Instead, we have to have that mindset and confidence that is undaunting and unwavering by anything that goes on around us.”

To help his team stay focused, Clark has employed a quote he continues to repeat often.

“We have to maintain being aggressive and ‘Keep our mind on the ultimate so that we don’t become captive to the immediate,’” Clark said. “That’s a quote by John Maxwell that I’ve emphasized to them before.”

“They’ve got to keep their mind on hitting their routine and being aggressive about their routines versus being concerned about the circumstances and the things around them that they can’t control,” he said. “If we can do that, we’ll have done what we intended to do.”