Gymnasts place second in tri-meet
The Aggies opened their Western Athletic Conference competition with a second-place finish in a tri-squad meet at San Jose State Friday night.
Utah State posted a score of 191.350 behind the Spartans’ 194.700 and ahead of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s 181.675.
The Aggies opened the meet on bars with freshman Rachel Vaske scoring a 9.600. Freshman Paige Jones and junior Nicole Simoneau both landed scores of 9.675. Junior Rebecca Holliday had the top score for the squad with a 9.700.
After the first rotation the Aggies were in second as SJSU scored a 48.550 on vault and UWEC logged a 45.600 on beam.
USU moved to the beam for the second rotation of the night, where they maintained their second-place position with a total score of 94.850.
Simoneau led the Aggies with a score of 9.625. Jones scored a season-high 9.225, leading her to another night of bettering her all-around score.
The beam has been a point of struggle for USU this season, but routines and scores continue to get better each week.
The team spent the week in practice hammering out their individual routines.
“We moved all the beams out of the practice gym and just kept one up,” head coach Jeff Richards said. “We kind of made it like it was more like a competition setting, to hopefully get them out of their element and maybe stress them out a little bit. We made them go until they all hit in a row.”
The scores this week were higher than last week’s meet against BYU and the University of Arizona. Richards said he thinks this week’s practice helped a lot.
“It took them awhile but they’re figuring it out,” he said. “I think they’re kind of settling down a little bit.”
The Aggies took to the floor for the third rotation of the night with freshman Cammi Muhr scoring a season-high 9.675. Senior Jackie Dillon and sophomore Amelia Montoya followed with scores of 9.775 and 9.725 respectively. Jones concluded the rotation by matching the team’s high score of the season at 9.825.
USU finished the evening’s events on the vault with Holliday starting off with a 9.600. Vaske notched a 9.525 just before Dillon also scored 9.600.
Jones closed out the night with a 9.725 on vault, giving her an all-around score for the night of 38.450, and a new career-high.
“Tonight really showed me that each time I can keep improving and it’s only going to go up from here,” she said.
As she goes into the rest of her debut season, she said she’s just going to keep working and training for every event.
“I just go in to practice every day thinking I just need to focus on what I need to focus on and go to improve,” she said.
The Aggies continue their series of away meets and will be in Provo Saturday, Jan. 29 where they will once again face the Cougars and the Thunderbirds of Southern Utah University. Joining them will also be the Cyclones of Iowa State.
“We’ve had our first away meet, and I feel like we’re just going to go up after tonight,” Jones said.
Richards said they will continue to work hard in practice this week in preparation for this quad-meet.
“We’re not going to overwork them though,” he said. “We have a few things we’re just nursing here and there, but we hope to do a little more training with them and making things a little more intense that way.”
Mostly, he wants the girls to enjoy what they’re doing, he said.
“Hopefully we can get it so they’re just doing their gymnastics, not thinking about who they’re competing with, or worrying about what the score is,” he said. “We want to get them to do their gymnastics and have fun with it.”
– megan.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu