Carmen de Viboral The Arizona State women’s gymnastics team (3-0, 2-0 Pac 12) is traveling to Logan, Utah in their first away meet of the season to face Utah State (2-4, 0-1 WAC) tonight at 7pm inside the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum. The Gym Devils are currently ranked 26th overall in the nation heading into this meet.
Last Friday in the State Farm Territorial Cup competition against Arizona, ASU finished with a season high score of 195.875 leading them to a victory over the Wildcats whose final score was 194.350. This was the first time since 2006 that ASU had beaten the Wildcats in the Territorial Cup matchup for gymnastics.
Sheer excitement and a few tears shed of jubilation from senior gymnast Beate Jones filled Wells Fargo Arena after the victory. However, the gymnasts only had one day to savor the win. They were back in action at Sunday’s practice preparing for Utah State.
Assistant coach Tom Ward talked about his teams approach to the first away meet of the season. Ward stated, “Our team just needs to keep doing what we are doing and hold the same mental focus that we have now. The key for the girls is to stay in their same frame of mind going into Utah State.”
Sophomore Samantha Seaman mentioned that the seniors were already preparing the underclassman of what to except while on the road. “It’s tough competing on the road because you have to get used to the new equipment, new judges even the lighting, everything is different. The seniors are reassuring the team to keep their energy up and to not focus on it being an away meet, but rather executing solid routines.”
Even senior Beate Jones voiced, “When we go away we might get scored differently. We have our home judges here and a little bit of a home court advantage sometimes. I don’t want the freshman worrying about the scores. They just need to worry about hitting their routines. The biggest difference when we are away is that we don’t have that extra helping with our crowd, which means we have to keep that energy going and focus on putting up high scores.”
Some updates for the lineup for both vault and bars. Arizona State is keeping the same lineup for vault as they had against Arizona. Amanda Davies competed as the anchor for her first time against Arizona and finished a solid vault with a 9.750. Samantha Seaman will be competing in bars for her first time. The coaches have expressed a lot of interest in having her compete in the All-Around. With bars now in the lineup she is one event away from doing just that.
The Sun Devil’s faced a major test last week competing against their rival but they will yet again face another challenge of competing against the Aggies on the road.
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