Gym Devils barely escape Palo Alto with first Pac-12 win

(Photo via Samantha Maxwell/WCSN)

The Arizona State gymnastics team took a trip to California and Maples Pavilion on Friday to compete against the Stanford Cardinal of Palo Alto and came away with a win by a tenth of a point in a 196.975 to 196.875 nail-biter. The No. 20 Gym Devils won three of the four rotations and put together their third meet in a row earning a 49 or higher on every event.

Senior Sarah Clark had herself a meet, tying for the event title in both the beam and the bars, and graduate gymnast Hannah Scharf got second for ASU in both events, making her return to bars – and the all-around – for the first time this year.

In the all-around, Scharf finished second with a 39.325, while Senior Jada Mangahas put up a 39.450, her best of the season, to win the all-around meet title.

Stanford started the meet with a season-high 49.200 on vault but was outscored in the first rotation by the Devils’ own season-high 49.375 event score on bars. Clark’s 9.950 was a huge factor for the season record, but ASU also had 9.875s coming from Scharf, Mangahas and Senior Emily White.

After switching events, ASU fell behind after being outscored 49.350 to 49.025 while on vault. Senior vault specialist Anaya Smith scored another event-winning score of 9.925 after coming off a career-high last week. However, this week in Maples, two unusually lower scores from Scharf and graduate Gym Devil Gracie Reeves forced ASU to play catchup. The Cardinal responded well with graduate Chloe Widner matching Clark’s 9.950 and Junior Brenna Neault scoring a 9.900.

After the halfway mark, Arizona State cut the deficit to just .050 due to high efforts on floor from Scharf, White, and freshman Halle Gregoire. Stanford sophomore Porsche Trinidad scored a 9.925, but the Cardinal’s five other scores ranged from 9.850 to 9.700, not enough to extend or keep their lead over Arizona State.

Going into the final rotation, Stanford swapped out its floor anchor from Neault to Senior Ira Alexeeva, but it wasn’t enough to hold on, as the Cardinal did not top 9.900 on the event. The Devils notched several clutch scores in the final stretch on beam, some of the most impressive being Clark’s event-winning 9.925 performance, Scharf’s 9.900 routine and Mangahas’s 9.875.

White, the Sun Devils’ beam anchor, showed up clutch in the final ASU routine of the night and put a 9.825 on the scoreboard that put the back-and-forth meet just out of reach for ASU’s opponents and sealed a win for head coach Jay Santos’s squad. The team finished at 196.975 and picked up its first Pac-12 Conference matchup win.

The Gym Devils’ next meet will be an in-state rivalry showdown in Tucson with the Arizona Wildcats on Feb. 15, where they hope to keep momentum and morale strong with another Pac-12 win.