Florida star Trinity Thomas ties NCAA record for career perfect 10s

Reigning NCAA all-around gymnastics champion Trinity Thomas of the University of Florida earned the 28th perfect 10 of her career Saturday, tying the 27-year-old record set by Kentucky's Jenny Hansen in 1996 and matched by UCLA's Jamie Dantzscher in 2004.

Thomas earned the score on vault during NCAA championships in Fort Worth, Texas, and after weeks of speculation as to whether she would compete again this postseason due to a lower right-leg injury she sustained at Regionals last month.

«I was not focused on [the record] at all,» Thomas said in a TV interview after the meet. «I was just focused on being out here one last time with my team. We left it all out there on the floor and I could not be more proud of us.»

Thomas hadn't practiced in the two weeks since Regionals, but shortly before competition Florida added Thomas to its bars and vault lineups for Thursday's semifinal meet. She was nearly perfect in her return on bars, drilling a stuck landing on her double layout dismount and earning a 10 from one judge and an overall score of 9.950. Later in the meet, she scored a 9.90 on vault with a tiny hop back on her landing and helped the Gators qualify to Saturday's final.

Saturday, she made history. Competing fifth in Florida's third rotation and with the Gators trailing Oklahoma, the defending champions, Thomas drilled a stuck landing on a Yurchenko 1½ vault to earn the first perfect 10 of the meet. After saluting the judges, she ran to her team and hugged and high-fived her teammates and coaches with tears in her eyes. When her score was posted, the crowd exploded in celebration. Thomas competed in only two events again Saturday, earning a 9.9125 on bars in the final routine of her career.

«I don't even know how to