Aggie gymnasts looking for revenge at BYU tonight
Coming off two straight wins, the Aggie gymnastics team travels to Provo today in a tri meet with No. 10 Oregon State and No. 29 Brigham Young.
The No. 34 Aggies have walked away from their last two meets posting their top two scores of the year against Southern Utah and Alaska-Anchorage.
At their second to last home game against Alaska-Anchorage last Friday, USU swept the top four finishes in all four events plus the all-around, which set their season record to 7-5 overall.
Senior Jessica Parenti-Otte won three of the four events last week with outstanding performances on the vault, bars and beam.
Fellow senior Meagan Lewis also finished with a high all-around score after placing second on the vault with a season-high score of 9.800.
Overall in the nation, the Aggies are ranked 24th on the vault, tied for 37th on the bars, 41st on the beam and 31st in the floor exercise.
But even with the numerous season-high and career-high scores over the past two weeks, getting past the Oregon Beavers and the BYU Cougars will be no easy task.
Oregon State has a current record of 9-4 in the Western Athletic Conference. They lost to Florida, now the No. 1 team in the nation, in their first meet by only 3.050. Following the loss, Oregon went home to host California, beating them by a score of 195.400-191.875.
The Beavers have a perfect 3-0 home record with wins against Arizona, California and No. 5 ranked UCLA.
As for BYU, the Cougars had a strong start to the season with a record of 10-4, placing them as the second-highest ranked team in Utah.
BYU set a season-high score of 195.475 with a win against the Aggies in January, and then went on to finish third out of four teams with an overall score of 192.600.
Since the Feb. 2 quad meet at Utah, they have gone 4-0, with three of those wins coming on the road.
Fortunately for USU, the Cougars will be without their senior standout Kacie Capra-Callens Friday, who is out with an ankle injury.
-bfairman@cc.usu.edu