On Saturday, Fort Worth Texas was home to an old-fashioned duel. Well, a gymnastics one, at least.
After three events, Utah and Florida had separated themselves from the rest of the Super Six, and waged one last battle to see who would be named champion.
After the Utes stuck their last three vaults to launch into the lead, the Gators had a response, hitting two 9.95s to close the meet and squeak by the Red Rocks 197.850-197.80, to win their third straight NCAA National Championship.
“I am so proud of our kids for fighting back and nailing those last three routines to make it so that Florida had to hit big on its final routine,” said Utah coach Greg Marsden.
The second place finish is Utah’s best since 2008, but the Red Rocks just missed out on winning its first national title since 1995.
Utah, who tied with Florida for the highest score in Friday’s national prelims, came out swinging Saturday, quite literally. After opening up on a bye, the Utes went to the bars, and there they sent an early message.
Kassandra Lopez and Tiffani Lewis hit 9.9s, Corrie Lothrop scored a 9.25, but those performances took a back seat to history. For the second straight night, Georgia Dabritz was perfect on bars, scoring a 10.0 and pushing the Utes into an early lead in the competition.
With the 10.0 Dabritz became the first gymnast to score a 10.0 on bars in both the national semifinals and national finals.
Next Utah moved to the beam. Though none of their scores popped, all the Utes stayed on the apparatus, keeping them close to the top of the leaderboard, but Florida had overtaken them for first.
While the Red Rocks were on the beam, the Gators were competing on the floor, and they were, in a word, spectacular. Florida counted scores of 9.90, 9.90, 9.925, 9.950 and 9.975 to take a 98.95-98.825 lead over Utah at the halfway mark.
As Utah went to a bye, Florida moved to the vault and didn’t slow down.
Going first for the Gators, Bridgette Caquatto landed on her knees, but her teammates made sure that mishap would not be counted. Florida’s last five included four 9.9s or higher, and to keep pace the Utes would need some excellent performances the rest of the way.
Utah got just that.
As the Gators went into their last bye of the meet, the Utes took to the floor, needing some big scores to give them a chance in the meet’s final event.
Through four gymnasts, the Utes hadn’t scored higher than a 9.875, and it looked like Florida had pulled too far ahead, but two Utah seniors weren’t going down without a fight.
Dabritz scored a 9.90, and then Becky Tutka raised eyebrows with a 9.925. With those two scores Utah pulled within .15 of the Gators — the Utes were in striking distance.
Due to the nature of the apparatus, the team on vault always finishes the rotation first. So Utah would be able to watch Florida finish, and with a good performance maybe even put some extra pressure on the Gators.
Lothrop started things off with a low 9.750, but the rest of the Red Rocks made sure that one wouldn’t be counted. Samantha Patryka hit a 9.850, Lewis followed with a 9.875, and then the big guns came out. Lee stuck a 9.925, Kailah Delaney followed that up with a 9.925 of her own and Dabritz finished off the meet, as well as her final team competition, with a 9.975.
With the 49.550 performance on vault the Utes finished with a 197.800, it’s highest ever in a national meet.
Your move, Gators.
As the Utes stuck vault after vault, Florida was struggling on bars. The first four Gators had trouble on dismounts, and none of the them scored higher than a 9.850, meaning the remaining two Florida gymnasts needed to be near perfect for the Gators to top Utah — and they were just that.
Alex McMurtry and Bridget Sloan both hit 9.95s, stunning the Utes and allowing Florida to take home the National Championship.
“What’s not hard to take is I couldn’t ask more from this group of kids,” Marsden said. “They couldn’t have given anymore. If you could have said at anytime this year — especially after we lost Tory Wilson to injury — that Utah would take Florida or even Oklahoma down to the final routine and finish .05 behind, no one would have believed it. The only thing that could have made it better was one more tenth of a point.”
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