Q&A: GymDogs’ coach Courtney Kupets Carter on a season with expectation, excitement
Courtney Kupets Carter sat on the sandy beaches of Sea Island this summer. Her family — husband Chris Carter and three children: Brooklyn (4), Bentley (2) and Savannah (1) — surrounded her for memorable bonding time.
The best moment for the Georgia gymnastics coach, however, isn’t the first that comes to mind. It’s the fact that a family photo, with all five of them, turned out successfully. At last.
With three young children, that’s no easy feat. Each of them have to smile at the camera, avoid blinking at the flash and be synchronized with their parents and siblings. Their hotel offered a free 15-minute photo session, to where Kupets Carter only had to buy the individual prints. The brief shoot offered the opportunity for one sufficient photo.
“That’s a huge deal,” Kupets Carter said. “I was pretty impressed with the quality of it.”
There were other momentous times throughout the family’s summer, too. Brooklyn had the courage for an ear piercing. Bentley got his first haircut. But, once more, the significance of the family photo couldn’t be diminished.
Because, all things considered, it created a picture perfect moment (no pun intended).
Entering her third season as GymDogs’ head coach, that term could describe how Kupets Carter feels about her team. Georgia earned a No. 8 preseason ranking in the WCGA poll, and Kupets Carter overflows with excitement about this group. There’s depth, a strong freshman class and a group of experienced gymnasts that gives Georgia potential for its best season in recent memory.
Georgia opens the season in a quad meet with Bridgeport, Iowa and Oregon State on Jan. 3 at the Critique Classic Invitational in Kissimmee, Fla. Before then, Kupets Carter spoke at length with The Telegraph for a question-and-answer session that reveals plenty about the anticipation ahead of the 2020 season.
This Q&A has been slightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: I feel like you guys have been practicing since about August in a never-ending cycle. What did the First Look showcase event reveal about where this team currently stands?
CKC: November and December get very monotonous, and it gets hard at moments to continue the motivation level. It’s a lot in such a short month-and-a-half period with exams, going home for Thanksgiving and the athlete’s brains are everywhere. With all of that going on, First Look was a huge success in a lot of ways.
We’ve upgraded, we’ve changed some routines. We’ve added some people on events that they’ve never competed. It was a real good indicator of who is really going to step up. Who is going to be capable and confident enough in themselves to get after it? A couple of people really rose to the top with that, one being Sabrina Vega. Everybody knew it, but it was big for her to believe it. I can tell now that she’s confident. She hasn’t even done a lot of full bar routines with the dismount. We’ve done one thing at a time to build that confidence. It was a great way for her to start the season.
To see that and all of those pieces come together at First Look, it really starts our season off and a lot of the girls said ‘I just can’t wait.’ That makes me excited for them. There might be some hard days, but this team is in it. They’re ready. There are some question marks, but then you see that and think ‘this is going to be a great year.’
Q: Is it accurate to say you’re feeling more confident coming into this year than you did last?
CKC: That’s really accurate. We had that big freshman class last year. Not that we weren’t confident in them, but they hadn’t experienced it. Now, they know, and the bulk of the team understands what’s going on. That helps the dynamic of competition season.
These freshmen can get acclimated even quicker than last year’s class because of it. They will be contributors. We are really excited about that, and this is on the verge of being that next best year.
Q: What are the expectations from within the program? I know things ended on a sour note with finishing last at nationals after a 198 at regionals.
CKC: The expectations are similar in terms of what they need to do (through the offseason) by when. That’s a really good indicator for them to know where they’re at and what they should be doing to prepare for season. That’s one of those processes that you understand as juniors and seniors, but as freshmen you don’t really get until you finish the full year. We set different expectation timelines for their skills.
For the season, it’s always to be top-four at nationals. That’s a consistent goal, and they know the importance of being in that final four. I’ve been here twice now, we’ve had a leotard ready for that second day and we haven’t done it yet. We’re ready to make the best leotard possible, show it to them and say ‘you only get to wear it if they make the second day of nationals.’
Q: How do you plan to work with all-around competitors? There were four of them at First Look, but how does that translate to the opening meet in Orlando?
CKC: We have a ranking system based on those expectation timelines. We still have a few more (checkpoints), and First Look was a part of that. Fifteen percent of their ranking is based on when they come back from Christmas. It’s only a week, but that counts for so much. It doesn’t matter what you did in August, but what you can do now. We base all of those percentages on the timeline of the year. Most likely, we will have two all-arounders at this point, and there could potentially be three.
Sabrina is pretty clearly identifying herself as an all-arounder from the beginning. She probably won’t do it in every meet based on how her body is feeling. We have to be very smart about it.
Q: Looking at the roster, I see a lot of depth — other than on uneven bars. How does that serve as a plus?
CKC: It’s great, because we finally have quality depth. You can have one girl go in, and you have two people right behind them who can give the same routine. That’s what we’ve been missing the last two years. That can push us to the next level — a healthy level of competition against your teammates.
We don’t have as many with the same quality on uneven bars, but we push for consistency there. If they stay on the bar and clean it up throughout the year, we will start good and end great on every single event. There’s a consistent climb and there shouldn’t be this massive peak at any point ... other than our full best at the end of the year.
Q: You’ve been high on this freshman class ever since it signed. How does this group — Haley De Jong, Soraya Hawthorne, Amanda Cashman and Loulie Hattaway — fit into the core of Georgia gymnastics?
Note: Kupets Carter said each of the freshmen have suffered minor injuries throughout mandatory practices, which have created brief setbacks in training. De Jong (abdominal strain), Hawthorne (various, undisclosed), Cashman (shin splints) and Hattaway (shoulder) are expected to be fine for competition.
CKC: They really get it, and by that I mean they’re listening to the gymnastics aspects and the importance of team chemistry. They’re learning how to develop as individual athletes, the mentality they need and how it helps our team. All of these pieces are fitting in so well this year. The gymnastics has always been there, and now it’s been about handling mistakes. What do we do as a team? Does it elevate us and light a fire under us? They want it so bad for each other, and sometimes it makes them feel bad when making a mistake. We urge them to push that energy into the next person, and that has been huge for us this year.
I’ve been so excited. It’ll be a slow, continual growth. But when you have that, it’s a lasting growth.
This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Q&A: GymDogs’ coach Courtney Kupets Carter on a season with expectation, excitement."