(Photo: Susan Wong/WCSN)
Arizona State is just days away from kicking off its season in the annual intrasquad Maroon and Gold meet. This will be the Sun Devils first return to a competition setting after finishing third in the Salt Lake City Regional last season, just one place shy of qualifying for the NCAA Championship meet. Despite a disappointing end to the season for the Devils, they are back in the gym and ready to welcome fans back to Desert Financial Arena for a preview of the Gym Devil squad with the highest expectations since co-head coach Jay Santos was hired in 2017.
According to junior All-American Hannah Scharf, the expectations are not only external but also internal.
“I think we have very high expectations for ourselves, and we’re kind of all on the same page of the goals we want to achieve this year,” Scharf said. “I’m excited to be able to kind of lead the team, a little bit, into reaching our goals. We definitely want to make NCAA nationals. We want to finish top five as well by the end of the year, and wanted to win our conference as well.”
If this year’s squad is able to meet its lofty goals for the season it would be the first ASU team to qualify for nationals since coach John Spini’s team did so in 2006. They would also improve upon their No. 9 ranking at the end of last year and bring the first Pac-12 gymnastics championship title home to Tempe.
Unfortunately for the Gym Devils, they will have to attempt to accomplish these feats without Cairo Leonard-Baker, the two-time All-American who graduated this past spring.
“She was one of the most decorated gymnasts especially in recent history,” said Santos. “Cairo was huge. She did an immense amount and was so successful for this program in so many ways.”
Despite the loss, Santos believes this team still has a chance at achieving what last year’s squad didn’t: qualifying for NCAA Championships.
“Last year we had a team I thought was capable of being that competitive. I think they showed that at regionals, that they were capable of doing that and competing with those teams,” Santos said. “I think this year, on paper, we’re a little bit stronger, we’re a little bit deeper, a couple upgrades are going well, so it comes down to execution in the moment and doing what we really trained to do.”
One athlete who hopes to play a large role in the Devils’ anticipated success is senior Megan Thompson. Over the past couple of years, Thompson has been a strong contributor for ASU primarily on beam, competing a routine in every meet in 2020 and 2021. This season she looks to continue that trend while also supporting her younger teammates.
“I’m excited, ready to get out there and ready to just show them what I’ve got,” Thompson said. “I think that I can just kind of be the backbone for the team and just help them to do their best as well.”
With this being her final season, Thompson looks forward to starting things off as usual with the Maroon and Gold meet.
“Maroon and Gold is one of those meets to just kind of get us going, get us started, get jitters off, and I think that we have a lot of new skills, a lot of big things coming, and I think it’s a meet that we go out there, and we just kind of enjoy the sport and enjoy each other.”
“I can’t wait to compete. It’s definitely something that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now,” said freshman Alex Theodorou, ahead of her first season with ASU. “I’m really excited to have this opportunity to have fun with it and less pressure and just start out somewhere.”
Despite only being a freshman, Theodorou is already fielding comparisons from coach Jay Santos to the aforementioned Leonard-Baker. However, even then, Santos is not expecting her to fill such big shoes right away.
“It’s not just necessarily her on every given day,” he stated. “I feel like it’s going to get filled, but it’s not just the traditional just plug one person, pull Cairo out, put somebody else in.”
In figuring out the lineups for a team that runs deeper than past years, Santos will have help. Just this past June, his wife Jess Santos was promoted from associate head coach to co-head coach.
“It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to be a head coach at a big power 5 program,” Jess told reporters.
Already in her new role, she’s helping the team adapt to a somewhat post-COVID-19 world. After last season when the restrictions in place didn’t even allow for the full team to practice together, Jess has worked to incorporate some of those practice strategies to help the team in a less restrictive setting.
“COVID was so different, so that changed a lot, but we learned a lot of things that really helped us. So, we’ve tried to morph kind of what we were doing before that, but then really find the things that were successful for us last year and integrate them into this year.”
The differences of a post-COVID world will be on display immediately when fans will be allowed back in Desert Financial Arena to witness the beginning of the ASU gymnastics season. Their presence will help add to the official meet-like atmosphere of the Maroon and Gold scrimmage that will help show Jess and Jay what their team can do outside of the practice facility.
“It’s exciting because we tell everybody when we do Maroon and Gold we want it to be, you know, as close to a full meet setting as possible to get them ready for season. So it’s lights, it’s fans, it’s everything else, you know all of that, so we’re really excited about it.”
Maroon and Gold will serve as the final stepping stone for the Gym Devil squad before it begins competing against other opponents.
“Hopefully, we’ll have some good energy,” Jay said. “We’ll get there, we’ll see where it is, and make those last couple of tweaks before our season starts with Kentucky.”
The Maroon and Gold meet will be on Tuesday, Dec. 17 at 7 p.m. at Desert Financial Arena. ASU will take on its first opponent on Jan. 5 at 7 p.m. when the Kentucky Wildcats visit Tempe.
