When the scores were shown after Georgia Dabritz’ floor routine, the Huntsman Center crowd stood in approval. One judge had rewarded the Ute senior with a perfect 10.0 for her performance.
“You can never expect a 10,” Dabritz said. “(The judges) can always find things here and there and it’s still early in the season. It was nice to see that, but I wasn’t exactly expecting it, I knew it was a good performance though.”
It was the shining moment of Utah’s victory over Southern Utah, Boise State and UC Davis in a quad-meet Friday night. The Red Rocks finished the meet with a score of 196.675.
Last week against BYU, Dabritz’ floor routine contained a small mistake that went mostly unnoticed by spectators and even judges as she still finished with a 9.875 in the discipline. One person noticed though.
“To me it was noticeable,” Dabritz said. “So I wanted to go out there this week and improve upon that.”
She did improve, going through her routine in an effortless array of dancing and tumbling. In the end, Darbitz’ floor routine received a meet high 9.950 and as the crowd stood in applause, Darbitz took a small moment to acknowledge the cheers.
“It was just really happy moment for me,” she said. “But at the same time, I had to hurry on to the next performer. It’s not just me out there. I had to go help Tory [Wilson] with her mental routine and stuff and keep everything the same. I was really happy for a second, then I had to move on really quick. “
Darbitz used the performance to clinch the all-around win finishing with a score of 39.600 to best teammate Wilson, who finished with a 39.300 for the meet.
In the past, Dabritz has struggled with the beam and that has kept her mostly out of the all-around competition. But after impressing coaches during practices leading up to Friday’s meet, Dabritz got the nod and went second in the Utes’ rotation on the beam. Dabritz posted a 9.850, which was a team-high and the second best score of the meet. If she can continue to perform like that in the discipline, her coach thinks she could be one of the best all-around competitors in the country.
“If she can demonstrate to herself her teammates and her coaches that she can do that consistently and gain confidence and perform like that night in and night out on balance beam then she should be in the all-around,” co-head coach Greg Marsden said. “If she does, then she is as good as anybody.”
It wasn’t all postives for the Utes, however. A season ago, the Utes scored at least one 9.90 in vault in every competition except Regionals. All the Red Rock competitors failed to reach that mark on Friday.
Marsden admitted after the meet that he wasn’t all that pleased from what he saw from his team.
“Last week I thought there were really some high points,” Marsden said. “But I guess for the second meet of the season, I was expecting a little more. I told them it’s not anything to be upset about at this point, but were have to get much better, quickly.”
Marsden said the Red Rocks need to clean up their handstands on bars, stick dismounts and vaults better, and make their tumbling look easier.
“I’m not upset with the performance tonight, I just thought that having been through a meet this might be a little better,” Marsden said. “We can be better on every event, I expect to better on every event, they should expect to be better on every event.”
Marsden said that he is seeing his team perform better in the gym, but it just hasn’t translated into competition – at least not yet.
“It’s too early to be overly concerned about, but we got to do a better job starting next week,” Marsden said.
Utah returns to competition next Friday in its Pac-12 opener when it welcomes in UCLA to the Huntsman Center.
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