USU optimistic about gymnastics year
By Julie Ann Grosshans
The 2001 USU gymnastics team has a renewed spirit and drive this year that should help the Aggies to challenge for the Big West Championship crown and a berth in the NCAA nationals.
After being plagued early in the 2000 season with injuries, the team was never able to fully recover.
“This year those injuries have not only turned the corner, but the athletes on the squad are approaching a level that in my 23 years of experience I have not seen from a Utah State team,” said head coach Ray Corn.
Looking to improve on last year’s second-place finish at the Big West Championships, the team has been committed to training, which began the morning following a fifth-place finish at the regional meet.
“They all stayed through the summer and worked extremely hard for greater difficulty, originality and just commitment to the program,” Corn said.
Corn expects that Utah State will have the same kind of gymnastics that the school has been accustomed to in previous years, posing a challenge for BYU, Utah and the top-10 gymnastics teams in the country.
To accomplish this goal, both veterans and incoming freshmen will have to step up to fill the void that was left by graduating seniors Christy Denson, Jessica Porter, Trina Ewart and Marla Lowes. The four seniors contributed seven of the 24 routines to last year’s starting lineup.
Winning two Big West all-around titles and all-conference honors in each of her last three years, Denson left Utah State University as one of the most successful athletes in its history.
Corn said in a media release that the squad is capable of filling the gaps left by last year’s seniors. Not only does the team have 10 letter winners returning, four other athletes who seldom or never competed last season will also return.
Seniors Megan Wollstenhulme, the 2000 Big West vaulting co-champion, Kristin O’Dell and Amanda Jenkins will be the veterans leading the 2001 Aggie squad.
Woolstenhulme looks to be in the vaulting line-up as well as challenging for a spot on the beam and floor exercise. O’Dell returns as one of the premier floor workers from last year’s Aggie squad and could factor into the vault lineup, also. During the previous season, she averaged a score of 9.646 on the floor routine and scored a career-high 9.875 at Texas Woman’s University. Possibly contending for a starting position with her new release move on the bars, Jenkins rounds out the list of seniors.
Helping the seniors, a talented list of juniors and sophomores will return this year, including Kristen Bloom, who competed in the all-around in all but three meets last season. She was about to turn in a career-high 39.175 at Texas Woman’s.
“Kristen Bloom continues to improve and she’s our top returning all-arounder from last year,” Corn said. “She is going to be absolutely exciting to watch,” Corn said.
Corn said all of the freshmen – Chere DuPaix, Mika Houston, Kyla Mattioli, Kira Nulph and Brittnee Penman – should be able to come in and compete right away.
Due to the injuries last season, many of the young team members were forced into early competition. Corn said this is beneficial to the team this year, though.
The athletes have “gained so much experience from that, they are coming to us now and giving us a depth chart where we are no less than 10 deep in every event,” Corn said.
This will help the Aggies match up to their in-state rivals, BYU and Utah, and defending national champions, UCLA.
The Aggies will open the regular season on the road at Boise State Monday and then travel to Berkeley, Calif., to take on University of California, University of Arizona and Oklahoma University on Jan. 21. The team will open its home season Jan. 26 in the Spectrum.