Nationally ranked USU Gymnastics set for big 2022 season

Editors Note: This story was originally published in the Winter Preview Magazine, prior to the season-opening “Best of Utah” meet, where Utah State scored a 195.875, defeating BYU and SUU. 

With winter upon us, basketball isn’t the only sport Aggie students and alumnus can look forward to watching. The Utah State University gymnastics team also has a season that just began, and they’re more ready than ever.

Last season, at the 2021 NCAA Regional Championships, USU recorded a record 49.075 vault score, which beat the previous 48.950 record score in 2017.

The gymnastics team also made their mark last season with an average of 49.036 on floor, which ranks fourth in USU history, and recorded three all-time team scores with a 196.500 against University of Utah, a 196.600 against BYU, and a 196.775 at the Denver tri-meet, which ranks third in school history.

And although it may seem like the team has already accomplished a lot, they have a lot more goals they’re striving to achieve this year.

Head coach Amy Smith said she is very excited for the upcoming season and although they lost a lot of seniors last year, she is confident that the new freshman will step up to the plate and be a big help in obtaining their goals.

“I think as the coaching staff and even the team too, we really have this feeling that we can do even better than what we did last year,” Smith said.

“We want to win the conference. We feel like we’ve been knocking on the door,” Smith continued. “Last year we had one of our best conference meets, I mean we’ve just been building. That is something we are really striving for and feel like we can accomplish if we put the work in.”

Out of the 19 gymnasts currently on the team, there are seven freshmen, three sophomores, six juniors and three seniors.

One of those freshmen is Gabrielle Clark, who is not new to the spotlight or press after receiving recognition in her senior year of high school, after being the very first level 10 athlete to successfully complete the Simone Biles skill test.

Clark, who has been competing in gymnastics since she was nine years old, said that although it has been a transition from her competition team to being on a college team, she has loved every minute of it so far because she feels like she’s a part of a family and can’t wait for the season to start.

“I’m most looking forward to helping my team in any way that I can, and just moving forward as a team and improving as a team and the season in general.”

However, one struggle that the team is currently facing is conveyance and helping make the shift from club to college for all the freshmen.

“The communication changes so much from an athlete’s senior year doing club gymnastics to freshman year of doing college gymnastics. I think right now that transition is something that we’re working on and that communication of giving them more ownership and accountability,” Smith said. “That’s a big shift and I think that we’re kind of in the meat of that right now of getting them to realize that communication factor needs to play in.”

Despite the inevitable obstacles, Smith knows that these girls are pumped and can even feel the enthusiasm in the room during practice.

“The team has been talking about how great the energy has been and how completely just this very inspired excitement fills the gym,” Smith said. “And hearing girls making those comments has been pretty awesome too.”

After leading the Aggies to a 7-6-1 overall record in 2020, which named Smith the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference Coach of the Year and was the first time since 1999 that USU walked away from a season with a winning record, Smith believes they can do it again.

Carley Bayles, a senior gymnast on the team competing on beam, is another athlete to be watching for at the competitions this year.

Bayles, a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had a 9.900 score for beam in the 2021 season against U of U, which made for her career-best and averaged 9.775, which is tied for 11th in school history for best single-season average.

Bayles goal for herself for this year is to get a perfect 10.000 and believes that if she continues to work hard and put in the work, she’ll be able to achieve it.

Although this is her final year, she is ready for the season start, especially since last year was a very different experience due to the Coronavirus.

“This season will be way different from last. Last year we were still kind of dealing with COVID a little bit, so we weren’t even allowed to give high-fives,” Bayles said. “So I think it’ll change our energy a lot, being able to get really hyped up.”

Bayles said that the gymnastics team is also more known this year because they made it to regionals last year. To her, it feels like there will be an increase in following and fans.

Focusing on this year though, Bayles said that BYU could be their biggest competition.

However, Smith explains that gymnastics isn’t all about your direct opponent — it’s much more important to focus on getting good scores.

“We could open with BYU this year at home and maybe lose that meet, but then all of a sudden we’ve moved up in the rankings because our score was so good,” Smith explained. “Really we compete against everybody in the country every night when we’re going. It’s very unique to us.”

With the pressure of competing for a better score than every other team, every single competition, these athletes have to put in a lot of hard work.

Both Bayles and Clark said that the majority of their day consists of something related to gymnastics, however, their dedication always pays off in the end.

Smith said that she has the gymnasts capped at the maximum 20 hours a week, allowed by the NCAA. This includes practice, meetings and injury prevention. However, the girls are allowed to do more on their own if they want to.

And although having this good work ethic and the talent for gymnastics is needed to be a part of the team, Smith said that is only phase one of their recruiting process when they are looking for gymnasts.

“The next phase of that is really getting to know the athlete,” Smith said. “For us, we feel like personalities are such an important component for a team working well together and making sure that we’ve got the qualities and characteristics that we’re looking for, not only as gymnasts, but as people.”

Even Bayles has recognized the importance of not only being good at what you do, but also being able to trust your teammates and have that relationship to help push each other.

Overall, Bayles and Clark both said that they believe this years’ team does have that relationship and it’s their favorite part about being on the team.

“Our team culture is amazing,” Bayles said. “You could contact almost anyone on our team for anything at any time and they would be there for you, even if it’s someone you aren’t super close with, no questions asked.”

Smith said that their energy and that culture can be seen even during their competitions and she’s hoping that other students will come to support the team to see how they can all come together and perform.

“I feel like the year before COVID happened, we were gaining momentum,” Smith said. “We want to get back to getting more students, getting that student section presence at the gymnastics meets as strong as what it is at football and basketball and kind of start building that crowd culture.”

And claiming that college gymnastics in-person is very different from watching it on TV, Smith is confident that students will enjoy being able to watch how these gymnasts make these difficult events look easy.

“Whatever I can do to get people in the door to that first meet, they’ll be hooked after that,” Smith said.