The No. 4 Red Rocks will hit the road for the second time this season as they travel to Tempe, Ariz. to take on No. 19 Arizona State on Saturday.
Utah will look to keep its perfect record intact while conquering yet another ranked opponent, but it will have to do that in another team’s arena.
“I feel like one of our goals is to continue to become a better road meet team,” says co-head coach Megan Marsden. “I thought the team did a really good job at that at Cal. I thought we were a step up from last year in handling someone else’s floor and creating an intimidation factor. Every arena is a little different.”
The Sun Devils had a rough start to the 2014 season, losing to San Jose State in their first meet of the campaign with a score of only 193.625. But since then, Arizona State has bounced back, going 2-0 with scores of 195.900 and 196.000.
Despite the low first-meet score, Marsden says the Red Rocks cannot afford to take the meet lightly.
“On any given night, anything can happen and especially in someone else’s arena,” Marsden says. “Doesn’t matter who we go up against at this point. There is no one on the rest of our schedule that we can overlook, especially on the road.”
One Utah gymnast who is looking to break out is senior Nansy Damianova. She has had a solid start to the season but has taken a bit of a backseat to teammates such as Georgia Dabritz.
“I think I’ve been doing pretty well,” Damianova says. “I’ve been pretty stable on my three events, and I’m training beam, hoping that eventually I can get the chance to compete as well. I am healthy, and I’m just ready for this. I want to make it the best year for my last year and help the team in any way possible.”
Marsden says changes may be coming as soon as Saturday for the beam lineup after the group struggled once again last weekend.
“I think we are going to change up the lineup a little bit, so you will see a new lineup,” Marsden says. “We also adjusted Mary Beth [Lofgren’s] routine. She’s talented enough and has enough options that we were able to actually make a change in her skill selection to break her out of this rut.”
Saturday’s meet would be the perfect time for all of the gymnasts to get out of any funk they may be in, as co-head coach Greg Marsden will be going for his 1,000th career win.
“It’s a milestone for the program,” he says. “The nice thing for me is that I’ve been here the entire time, and it says a lot about the quality of the athletes we’ve had here and also our great coaching staffs over the years. I have been fortunate that Utah has provided me with the wherewithal to recruit great athletes and coaches.”
The meet starts at 1 p.m. and can be seen on pac-12.com. Commentary will be available at utahutes.com.
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