The ASU gymnastics team travels to Palo Alto, Calif., this weekend to compete against No. 2 Stanford in what will be yet another big test and an upset opportunity for the Sun Devils.
ASU (3-3) upset No. 13 Washington at home on Feb. 18 by posting a season-high score of 195.750, success that they hope carries over into Sunday’s meet against the Cardinal.
“We’re feeling really good right now going into Stanford,” freshman Samantha Seaman said. “We want to keep our momentum going and post another team high.”
The undefeated Cardinal will pose a tough challenge for the Sun Devils, especially on the road, but ASU can’t worry about how talented the opposition is if they hope to come away with a win on Sunday.
“We just have to stay focused on our skills and just hitting our routines,” Seaman said. “We can’t worry about beating them.”
The Sun Devils’ confidence and energy is as high as it’s been all season after the upset win against the Huskies last Friday.
They hope to gain even more momentum, plus another high road score to count toward regional qualification, this weekend in California.
“Having such a great week last week has given us a lot of confidence heading into this week,” senior Brittany Schuett said. “It’s definitely about the score. Away meet scores are the most important.”
The Sun Devils have been putting their routines under the microscope this week in practice in an effort to fine-tune any and all problems they’ve been having.
“We’ve been taking parts out of our routine that we’ve been either having issues with or that we’ve been getting a lot of deductions on, and we’ve been focusing on those [segments],” junior Madison Snowden said. “It’s eliminating a lot of pounding on our bodies as well.”
ASU will have to be even better and more meticulous on their routines than they have been if they want to pull off a second straight Pac-10 upset.
“We’re definitely going to have to be a very technical team when we compete against them,” Snowden said. “I think if we hit our routines and do a good job and we’re clean, I think we’re just as good of a team, if not better, than Stanford.”
The Sun Devils, who have shuffled around their event line-ups quite a bit so far this season, seem to have finally found some consistency and will likely stick to what worked last weekend against Washington.
“I think we’re going to keep things the same right now,” Snowden said. “We’ve had so much change this year that we want to keep things as consistent as possible and kind of build a chemistry amongst those girls in [each] line-up.”
As long as ASU remains focused and continues to improve with each competition, then the Sun Devils feel as though they have a legitimate shot to reach their goal of qualifying for nationals at the end of the season.
“We just take it meet by meet,” ASU assistant coach Kari Ward said. “The end goal is what’s driving them. What you’re seeing is the team coming together and doing what they can.”
Reach the reporter at kyle.j.newman@asu.edu
