Suzanne Yoculan and her Gym Dogs may be “Back 4 More,” but there’s another quartet that will be in play this week in Athens.

Since women’s collegiate gymnastics started naming a national champion in 1982, only four teams have ever won – Georgia, Alabama, Utah and UCLA. All of those teams and their long-tenured coaches are here this week, with other squads such as Florida and Michigan vying to break into the prestigious group.

“It’s definitely frustrating that only four have won the title,” said Gators head coach Rhonda Faehn, who was a gymnast at UCLA, but not during one of its title years. “Of course, we want to be the fifth school to break in and join that group. We came close last year, and I feel we have stronger team.”

Utah has won nine national championships, Georgia eight, UCLA five and Alabama four, with the Gym Dogs and Bruins taking 10 of the last 11 – not many sports can boast only four champions, so what makes gymnastics so different? What’s been the key to those four storied programs keeping newcomers off the top of the podium?

“I think very early on, they established a tradition and have been able to capitalize on that from a very early period in terms of recruiting,” said Denver coach Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart, who competed at Florida from 1989-92.

“And that has just continued on so they are able to recruit the best and brightest student-athletes out there.”

Said Stanford coach Kristen Smyth, “I think the signature component to those teams’ success is just the longevity of the four coaches that have won. Suzanne, Sarah, Greg and Valorie have been doing this a long time, and they’ve established an amazing amount of history and tradition in their programs.”

The quartet of past winners remains in top contention every year, and every champion follows a different path to No. 1. Yoculan pointed to that as a key definer of collegiate gymnastics’ four trend-setting programs.

“There’s a mutual respect because the four of us know what it takes, we know that everything just has to be right on a given day,” she said. “We can all relate to having teams win by default because everyone else just messes up, and we’ve also all won when we had hands down the best team in the country.”

UCLA’s Valorie Kondos Field echoed her colleague’s sentiment.

“I think that the good thing that we’ve got going is that we’ve lived through the fact that anything can happen,” she said. “In 2000, Georgia had three falls on beam, and we did our job. We went in sixth or seventh and it just happened, and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to win.’”

All that said, what are the chances of a fifth team jumping into the mix this year? And who would it be?

“There are teams like Florida and Michigan that have had great years and are every bit as capable of winning as anybody,” said Utah coach Greg Marsden.

“I think Florida has a great opportunity,” said Arkansas co-head coach Rene Cook. “They had a great opportunity last

year, and if there’s going

to be somebody new, they’re definitely the frontrunner.”

As for Yoculan, don’t bother trying to pick her brain about the possibility of a fifth team joining the group this week.

“Don’t even ask me about that,” she said, smiling.