(Photo: Marlee Smith/WCSN)
Arizona State Gymnastics lost to No. 3 ranked Utah 197.450 to 197.150, but really held its own in the process on Saturday. After the first rounds of activities, the Sun Devils were up 49.350 to 49.225.
Notable beam Sun Devils who performed nearly perfect on vault were sophomore Hannah Scharf with a score of 9.900 and senior Cario Leonard-Baker, who had a score of 9.900. When the Sun Devils took to the bars in round two, they continued their excellent play as they led 98.725 to 98.700, with Juliette Boyer’s 9.925 score being the highlight for ASU.
Utah started to pull away in rounds three and four after they outscored ASU in both beam and floor. The Sun Devils’ best score on the beam was freshman Sarah Clark’s, with a 9.850. For floor, Scharf was able to earn a score of 9.925.
Although the young Sun Devils were not able to come up with the victory, head coach Jay Santos was pleased with his team’s performance.
“You know Utah is a great team, they have phenomenal athletes,” Santos said. “They are going to keep putting up routine after routine and I think one of the biggest things I saw was [that] we did the same thing. They would put up a big score and there would be no flinch from us. We would turn around and put up another big score and we kept putting pressure on them from the start and they answered but so did we. Every time a big routine came up or we had a small mistake, the next kid in our lineup fired right back and got that energy going.”
Gymnasts on ASU used their emotions to boost them up and improve. Scharf said it fueled her throughout the meet.
“Definitely my weaker point was on beam, it was not my strongest routine and I knew it,” she said. “But that really fired me up for floor. I said to Rachel our volunteer coach that I was angry and upset about beam so I wanted to take that negative but positive energy for floor back for myself and for my team.”
ASU has already faced four top ten ranked teams in the nation in No. 2 ranked Oklahoma, No. 7 ranked UCLA, No. 10 ranked BYU and Saturday’s No. 3 opponnet Utah.
Leonard-Baker said the loss was a confidence booster.
“It teaches us how amazing we are every time we go up and we are actually competing with a team like that,” she said. “Finishing an event saying we are ahead of them or we are only a tiny bit behind them, incarnates so much energy when we go for that next routine or that next event. It feels great.”
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this loss was that the Sun Devils are resilient. They’ll use the positives of the meet to improve from their mistakes and stay positive.
The Sun Devils hit the road next as they go to play California on Feb. 14th and return to Tempe on the 20th to take on Stanford.
