After dropping its first meet of the season against Oregon State on Feb. 11, the University of Utah gymnastics team is back in the Huntsman Center this Saturday to compete against the UCLA Bruins.
“Taking a loss kind of ignites a fire underneath our feet and shows the younger ones that we win some and lose some,” said junior Maddy Stover. “We are coming in ready to get to work this week. We know it’s a big weekend ahead of us, but we aren’t intimidated.”
In recent years, co-head coach Megan Marsden thinks UCLA has been the team’s main rival, and since joining the Pac-12, it has been heightened.
“This is a rival of ours, and it’s time to take a look and see how we stand up,” Marsden said. “Obviously, UCLA has been improving weekly and had a big score last weekend at home, so we will need to be at our best to challenge them.”
In 2016, the Red Rocks dropped its matchup with the Bruins by .025. Stover said that her and the rest of the team are doing their best to take what they do in practice and replicate it out on the floor.
Stover added that things are constantly moving, but hopefully they can find a concrete lineup so they know what to expect meet after meet. Going into Saturday, Stover said that they just need to keep their Utah bubble nice and tight, and one way or another it is going to be a competitive night in gymnastics.
“This team is full of talent,” Stover said. “We have been dealt our fair share of cards that you don’t want to see happen — two season-ending injuries is tough to swallow — but if you look at the positives, we can kind of solidify our lineups now and kind of find where everyone meshes well within that line up.”
As far as improvements go, Marsden feels that her team still needs to stick more vaults and stick more landings around the floor. According to Marsden, the Red Rocks are getting better at not giving away easy points, but if they make mistakes on a landing outside of an absolute stick, they leave it up to the judges.
“Typically, something other than a stick is at least a one-tenth deduction,” Marsden said. “From what I am finding when I put in routine summaries, these are just for me to get some information back from the judges, most of the time when we have a landing that does a tiny scoot, they are taking a tenth, and a tenth in college gymnastics is a lot.”
Stover agrees with Marsden, and she feels that they need to work on starting off their first event stronger. Stover also added that it’s the sticks that count, and the sticks really show the finesse at the end of the routine to the judges.
The meet is set to begin at 8 p.m. MT.
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