When Utah joined the Pac-12, it was clear all of the schools’ teams would have very different schedules. For most squads, the change brought more difficulty.
In the Red Rocks’ case, however, a different change came about. In Utah’s Mountain West days, the gymnastics team was essentially an independent and could schedule meets against whatever schools it wanted without any conference affiliation to tie it down. To prepare his team for the postseason, co-head coach Greg Marsden would schedule the most elite teams in the nation.
Now the Red Rocks are forced to face the seven other teams in the conference (four Pac-12 schools don’t have gymnastics programs), limiting the flexibility they have in scheduling opponents. Despite this, coaches insist their schedule isn’t much different on an annual basis than it was before the move to the Pac-12.
“Before we joined the Pac-12, we met all those [Pac-12] teams anyway,” said co-head coach Megan Marsden. “They are all out West. It was just relatively simple travel, and so Greg tried to create home-and-aways with those schools even when we weren’t in the conference.”
Even still, this leaves just a few meets that Utah has the liberty of choosing its opponent. While most of the Pac-12 teams consist of top-end talent, there is occasionally a squad or two that does not meet that standard.
That was the case last week when the Red Rocks went up against an inferior Washington squad. If Utah was still essentially competing as an independent like in years past, Greg Marsden may have been able to avoid that blowout and schedule a tougher team to better prepare his gymnasts for the postseason.
Despite that, Marsden said that isn’t a good enough reason to not join a major conference.
“There are too many positives about being affiliated with a conference,” he said. “Believe me, I know, because we weren’t for most of my career here. There are just too many advantages to worry about.”
Marsden stressed that even though scheduling a potentially stronger opponent is enticing, it doesn’t always work. The better teams in the nation typically have their own conference schedules to work with, which made it hard for Marsden to schedule exactly who he wanted to when his team was independent.
After facing the Huskies last weekend, the Red Rocks have now competed against all of their conference foes in 2014 with two regular season meets remaining. In those final meets, Utah will achieve one goal Marsden tries to accomplish each year when making the schedule.
“We try to get into the two other major conferences [Big Ten and SEC],” Marsden said. “We try to get to good parts of the country against quality competition … You want to have as good of competition as possible. I like to go to places that run good meets and try to get the team to different parts of the country.”
The Red Rocks will close their season with meets against Michigan of the Big Ten (joined by UCLA) and Georgia of the SEC.
Still, gymnasts like being part of a conference.
“Now our schedule make a lot more sense for the general public,” said senior co-captain Hailee Hansen. “I like it a lot better. I love being part of a conference, and I think it makes it more fun.”
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