Olympic ceremony not to blame for poor performance
Although the Spectrum was full of energy following the Olympic Torch Ceremony Wednesday, the Utah State University gymnastics team couldn’t come up with enough energy of their own to defeat as they fell 195.425-191.925 to BYU in the meet following the ceremony.
The meet started an hour later than scheduled because the torch was late.
“I know they were riding high because of the Olympic ceremony, but that should have had nothing to do with it [the loss],” USU Head Coach Ray Corn said.
Missy Marlowe, a member of the 1988 U.S. Olympics gymnastics team, was at the meet commenting for Sportswest. She agreed the ceremony should not have influenced the performance of the team.
“[The ceremony] might have made it a little more inconvenient, but when they’re at home and have the home crowd, it shouldn’t matter too much,” Marlowe said.
The ceremony did affect the warming up of the team, however. Instead of getting ready in the Spectrum as they usually do, the gymnasts warmed up in the HPER Building and were shuttled over to the Spectrum just before the torch arrived so they could see it.
In addition, the athletes were given 12 minutes to warm up between rotations.
Senior gymnast Kirra Seeley said the warm ups were confusing.
“They kept changing on us and we were never quite sure what was going on,” she said. “We weren’t sure if we wanted to warm up completely in the other gym.”
All-arounder Jessenia Abrego said she thought the ceremony did affect the meet.
“We were really pumped up because of the ceremony,” she said. “I don’t know if we were too pumped up, but I think the ceremony definitely had something to do with it.”
Despite a full house- including spectators and participants- in the 10,270-seat Spectrum for the ceremony, which ended at 6:20 p.m., the meet had an audience of 3,112 since many of the spectators went home.
“It would have been really exciting if the house had stayed packed,” freshman gymnast Katie Rutherford said. “But it was still a big crowd, so it was fun.”
Corn said, “I think a lot of people stayed, and then as time progressed, left. The longer warm-ups probably had something to do with it, but they were safer.”
Despite their big loss, many gymnasts said they were glad they got to see the torch ceremony.
“It definitely got us excited when we saw all the people [at the ceremony],” Rutherford said. “It was history in the making.”
Abrego said, “We were all talking about [the ceremony]. We were really pumped about it.”