Gymnastics finishes fourth at BYU quad meet with score of 191.900
Even with an improvement from last week’s scores, the Aggie gymnasts couldn’t keep up with their competition and took fourth place in Saturday’s quad-meet held at Brigham Young University.
BYU and the No. 20 Iowa State Cyclones tied for first with a final score of 194.925. No. 16 Southern Utah University took third with 194.275, and the Aggies posted a total of 191.900.
This was the second time this season the Aggies faced both BYU and SUU, but the first time competing against Iowa State since 2005, where they met at the NCAA Central Regional Championships.
“A couple events are getting OK, and a couple others not so OK,” head coach Jeff Richards said. “We just aren’t competing with confidence.”
Confidence in competition has been a huge point of struggle for the Aggies this season. The girls practice well and have their routines down, but something changes when they hit the arena for meets.
“We go into practice and they’re very confident. We’re just trying to get them to have that same confidence in the meets,” Richards said. “What we see in meets is completely not what we see in the gym. We’re not sure why. They just look scared and nervous.”
“We get scared. And when you get scared you lose your confidence,” said junior Nicole Simoneau. “When you think like that, you’re going to fall. I think that’s really all there is to it.”
USU is now 1-7 with the three losses from the fourth-place finish. BYU improves to 8-1-2, while ISU is 4-1-1 and SUU suffered its first losses of the season in sliding to 4-2.
The Aggies started the meet on the uneven parallel bars, registering a 48.500 for the total score. Simoneau earned a 9.85, tying the score for the bars title.
The Aggies moved to the beam for the second rotation, notching a 47.325, putting them in fourth place at the halfway point of the meet. Beam scores were up again from last week, but still not as high as the team would like to see.
“If we can get those falls gone and get them a little more confident and get those scores up there,” Richards said.
“We had two falls today,” Simoneau said. “We want no falls.”
For the third rotation, the Aggies moved to the floor, where they were led by senior Jackie Dillon and her 9.750. Freshman Cammi Muhr had a career-high 9.725, contributing to the overall score of 48.275.
Dillon also led the Aggies on the vault, the fourth and last rotation of the day, with a score of 9.700, leading to a team score of 47.800.
Saturday marked the first time freshman Rachel Vaske competed as an all-around gymnast for the Aggies, earning a total score of 37.700. Dillon was the other all-around competitor for the Aggies, notching a 37.825.
Senior Lyndsie Boone is usually another all-around gymnast, but has been out with an injury for the last two weeks. Richards said there is a chance she will return for next week’s meet, but it will more likely be another two weeks before she’s ready.
Saturday’s meet was the second of a four-meet road trip for the Aggies. For many sports, teams do consistently worse when competing at other schools. Simoneau said she doesn’t think that’s the case for them.
“There’s less of a crowd for us at away meets, but other than that there’s not really much of a difference,” she said. “We have to get used to new equipment, but I think we do pretty good at competing away.”
The Aggies continue their road swing for the next two weeks. The team will head to Cedar City this weekend to again take on the SUU Thunderbirds Friday, Feb. 4. This will be a meet between just the two Western Athletic Conference schools.
They will continue WAC competition the next week, in a dual-meet at Sacramento State.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” Richards said. “We’ll work hard this week. We don’t want to push the girls too hard, but if we can push a little harder, then we will.”
– megan.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu