Senior Brianna Gades reaches for the bar during a routine in a meet against Southern Utah, Friday, Jan. 9, 2015 at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe. ASU came from behind to defeat SUU 194.2-193.925. (Andrew Ybanez/The State Press)The ASU gymnastics team's lack of depth outweighed a few shining performances as the team placed fourth at the Cal Quad Meet in Berkeley, California, on Sunday afternoon.
The team finished the meet with a 192.650 final score, its lowest in three matches this season.
California won the event with a 195.900 score, followed by Denver (195.500), San Jose State (194.200) and then ASU.
Senior Natasha Sundby posted the highest score by a Gym Devil on any of the events, a 9.900 on the floor event that was second behind only Cal's Toni-Ann Williams on the floor.
"I knew that one of the girls in our lineup had gone down in the beginning so I knew my score was going to matter," Sundby said. "I just tried to go out there and do my best so that I would do better for the team overall."
At each event, teams are allowed to compete with six gymnasts, but ASU only competed with five on the floor and vault because of injuries.
"We have several people out with lower leg injuries that should be back on those events in a few weeks," head coach Rene Lyst said.
But she was also quick to point out that injuries weren't entirely to blame for ASU's season-low score total.
"We need to clean up and not have so many little mistakes," Lyst said. "We're having a lot of minor errors, but when you have multiple routines with minor errors it ends up in a lot of deductions at the end of the day, so that's something we need to focus on cleaning up before next weekend."
Outside of the small errors, ASU's team showed passion by posting some of their highest scores in the later rotations, refusing to give up even though they were in fourth place for almost the entire day.
"I thought the team had a great attitude," Lyst said. "I thought they showed a lot of heart and a lot of determination and really worked hard the entire time. I'm really impressed with their competitiveness and the group's energy level through the entire competition and throughout this entire season."
Despite only having five gymnasts compete on the vault, ASU scored 48.400 on the rotation.
Junior Taylor Allex led the way with a 9.800, followed by Sundby's 9.775 and junior Allie Salas' 9.700.
Salas, one of two all-around Gym Devils, scored a 38.750 overall on the four events.
Junior Stephanie Miceli, ASU's other all-around gymnast, posted a 38.400 overall. Her best event was the beam, a 9.700 that was right behind Allex's 9.775 and senior Brianna Gades' 9.750 for the team-high.
The beam was Salas' lowest-scoring event of the four rotations. She scored a 9.575 but following the meet, was already ready to work with her team on improving that score and others.
"I've been working hard this week to gain confidence," Salas said. "There's still a few mistakes made but there's always room for improvement in all areas of gymnastics, so we just gotta get back to the gym and keep working on the details."
In agreement, Sundby was excited by the team's energy throughout the event.
"Every meet, we go out, it's 100 percent effort from everyone as a whole," Sundby said. "It's not always turned out how we want it to be, but I think each week we go out and give it our best and we try and keep the energy up."
And even with the injuries, the team is optimistic about the rest of the year.
"It's the beginning of the season, still early on," Salas said. "I feel confident that we'll get a full lineup later in the season."
ASU will head back to Wells Fargo Arena this week to take on Stanford on Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. MST.
You can click here to see the final results from all teams at the Cal Quad Meet.
Reach the reporter at mtquesad@asu.edu or follow @mitchTquesada on Twitter.
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