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)If tonight was any indication, the ASU gymnastics team is in for quite a show under new coach Rene Lyst.
For almost the entire meet, ASU found itself in a significant hole, but a last-gasp surge on the floor coupled with two Southern Utah players falling off the balance beam gave ASU a 194.2-193.925 win in Lyst’s debut.
“It was really exciting,” Lyst said. “I’m so proud of the team…We didn’t let any little thing get in our way. We just kept to our plan, we kept working hard, we kept having positive energy and it paid off in the end and we ended up beating Southern Utah to start the season and not a terrible score as well. I’m not sure it could go much better than we just did tonight.”
ASU struggled on its first event (vault), with two scores below a 9.5 and without the luxury of being able to drop one of them. ASU ended up being outscored by 0.775 in the vault. Depth at the event was a concern.
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“We’ve had some lower-leg injuries at the beginning of this year,” Lyst said. “A couple people are not back yet on vault, thus we had the two lower start values on vault because we were just not quite ready depth-wise and difficulty-wise and the goal was to pit, be safe and be clean and just keep that momentum going and I thought the team handled that really well because that’s a challenge – you’re giving away tenths right away at the meet, but we just kept grinding and working hard.”
ASU slightly closed the gap on bars with a 0.2 point edge in the event. While ASU was competing on the balance beam, SUU was on the floor. ASU only made up 0.025 points in the third event and entered the final one trailing 145.85-145.3.
Until the waning moments of the match, it seemed like SUU was going to spoil Lyst’s debut, but the momentum swung in the final event when SUU’s Tyly Bozzuto (went first) and Jamie Armijo (went fifth) both fell off the balance beam.
ASU saved its best for last with a 9.8, 9.9 and 9.875 from junior Allie Salas, senior Natasha Sundby and junior Taylor Allex, respectively, on the floor to close the meet. It all came down to Allex’s floor routing – needing a 9.6 to tie the match, but she far exceeded that mark.
“Floor is our strongest event by far,” Lyst said. “We’ve thought that all season and so to obviously go out and hit well in our last three people on the floor were just phenomenal so to have 1-2-3 hit like that and come from behind, I think we’ll see more of that this year because floor being such as strong event for us.”
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Notes:
- Salas (38.75) and junior Stephanie Miceli (38.375) competed in all the events for ASU. It was Salas’ first all-around meet at ASU (she had mainly done vault and floor).
“Tonight was my first time competing all-around since club gymnastics, so it was a big change,” Salas said. “It felt good and I was nervous because I hadn’t done bars and beams in a while.”
- SUU used 12 players, while ASU only used nine.
- ASU athletic director Ray Anderson and football wide receiver Jaelen Strong were among those in attendance on Friday.
- ASU next plays Kentucky on Friday at 5 p.m. in Lexington. The team's next home game is Jan. 31 versus Stanford.
Reach the sports editor at jmjanss1@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @jjanssen11
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