There was the time Utah head coach Greg Marsden pulled his team off the floor at BYU, refusing to finish the meet.
“Almost cost me my job,” he said.
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There was the time when Aimee Trepanier’s floor pose was featured on a billboard, stirring up controversy because some deemed it inappropriate.
“I can’t see Aimee without thinking of that,” Marsden said.
There was the time when the team decided to learn an entire Styx album on a long road trip and played it again and again.
“That was really obnoxious to hear that over and over,” Marsden said.
As over 70 alumni circled the gymnastics floor following No. 4 Utah’s win over Arizona State on Friday, these were the types of memories that came flooding back to Marsden.
It wasn’t the championships or the Super Six appearances that he remembered, it was the experiences that happened on the road trips, and the fun moments that he and his team shared along the way. He remembered all the journeys he took with his former pupils, not necessarily the destinations they reached.
“That was emotional,” Marsden said about looking at his old gymnasts back on the Huntsman Center floor. “There’s so many great memories over the years.”
Marsden told his current squad before Friday’s meet that there would be a time for all the 40th anniversary celebrations and that the Red Rocks should be focused on the task at hand, but that didn’t stop one gymnast from paying a little tribute to the days of old.
Before the 1993 season, Trepanier appeared on the aforementioned billboard in a pose from her floor routine to promote the team. Some people found it a little too provocative and a controversy developed over the image.
With Trepanier in attendance, senior Corrie Lothrop ended her floor routine with that same infamous pose.
“That was pretty controversial so I thought it would be cool to bring it back,” Lothrop said. “I’ve been waiting all season to do it, so I was pretty excited to do it tonight.”
Lothrop did get a word of advice from Utah co-head coach Megan Marsden, who was an assistant during Trepanier’s time at Utah.
“Megan told me I should have done it a little longer,” Lothrop said.
And Lothrop might take her coaches’ words to heart next time she takes the floor.
“It was originally planned just for tonight, but we’ll see,” Lothrop said. “I haven’t made any final decisions tonight.”
It wasn’t just the 40-year anniversary that was being honored on Friday. The Utah gymnasts wore orange ribbons in their hair to pay homage to Georgia Dabritz’s longtime club coach Laura Tebo, who passed away last Sunday.
“The team wanted to dedicate tonight [to Laura],” Greg Marsden said. “They all wore Laura’s favorite color ribbons, and I think they dedicated their performance to Laura.”
Tebo had been Dabritz’s coach since the Utah senior was just two-years-old, and no one shined as brightly on Friday night than Dabritz.
In her first routine since her coaches’ passing, Dabritz followed teammate Tory Wilson’s perfect vault with a 10.0 of her own, creating an energy that Wilson said she’d never felt before.
It was a moment that Tebo surely would have been proud of, and it added another special experience to a night that may just be added to Greg Marsden’s long list of fond memories – a night that according to Marsden “couldn’t have been scripted any better.”
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