The toughest stretch of the regular season has arrived for the No. 5 Utah gymnastics team as it heads to the Bay Area to face No. 12 Stanford this Saturday.
Utah (5-1), currently coming off a gritty performance in its win over Washington last weekend, is hoping to continue to build on the team’s high overall scores in order to reach a decent qualifying score for NCAA Regionals.
The Cardinal (4-2) are also looking to build momentum from their previous wins over Arizona and Arizona State. A win at home against a potential Super Six side like Utah will do wonders for Stanford, who is looking to climb the national polls to catch up to the Red Rocks and fellow Pac-12 rival UCLA.
The Red Rocks will once again rely on senior Breanna Hughes and sophomore Samantha Partyka to provide Utah with a solid backbone in all four events. Partyka, who took some time to rest from the floor due to a sore knee last Saturday, is excited to head on the road to face Stanford in Northern California.
“The team is just ready to travel again, and it’s going to be exciting,” Partyka said.
Hughes, who is also looking forward to facing another Pac-12 rival, is prepping for the meet as she and the team always do: building confidence and trusting in their training.
“I think we’re prepping the same [way the team] preps for any meet,” Hughes said. “We’re just really trying to tighten up our mental choreography in the gym and put in some good practices so we have confidence going into the meet. We just need to go out there and trust in our training.”
Saturday’s meet will also be a good test for what is to come in the Pac-12 Championships. Like Oregon State and UCLA, programs Utah has already faced, the Cardinal are one of the top gymnastics programs in the conference and have usually ended up at the top near the Red Rocks by the end of the regular season.
Co-head coach Megan Marsden knows this will be a preview of what is to come, and she knows from experience that Stanford is not an easy adversary, always trying to take over Utah’s reign at the top of the Pac-12.
“[Stanford] have always been one of the last four teams in the Pac-12 Championship,” Marsden said. “They’re also usually at the National Championships and sometimes vying for a Super Six spot, so it’s no question that they are extremely strong.”
Marsden is also hoping for the team to put in better overall performances than in the past when they traveled to Palo Alto to take on the Cardinal in 2014.
“We have not had much luck in their arena the last couple ventures there, so we hope that it motivates the team to change that and do well,” Marsden said. “At the same time, all we can control is our performance, and we have to wait and see what that gets us.”
But Marsden isn’t worried about Stanford too much and feels that the Red Rocks are in a good place right now with their performances and their rising confidence.
“Right now the team seems to be on a roll, and are getting more confident,” she said. “I want to see that as we continue to go against teams that are at the top of the Pac-12 and in the country, and see if they can keep their confidence high in those scenarios.”
The Red Rocks take on the Cardinal this Saturday at 3 p.m. MST, and will be broadcast on Pac-12 Networks.
@chad_marquez