[Online Exclusive]: Young gymnastics squad upset by Arizona

Despite a relief in their schedule combined with their perceived
growth from competing against No. 1 Georgia, a number of falls
during the first rotation of Friday night’s meet at Arizona
proved to be the Bruins’ undoing as they were upset
195.335-194.7 by the 14th-ranked Wildcats.

The sixth-ranked Bruins kicked off the meet on the uneven bars
with half of its lineup unable to complete a clean routine. Even
junior Ashley Peckett, who has hit all 16 of her routines this
season, slipped to the floor on a difficult release move to record
her lowest score of the season. Meanwhile, the Wildcats
successfully hit each of their routines on the vault, giving them a
near one-point lead over the Bruins heading into the second
rotation.

After a few mental foibles on the bars, Coach Valorie Kondos
Field recollected her young squad to incite the possibility of an
impressive comeback.

“The early mistakes were costly,” Kondos Field said.
“But I told them, “˜We’re going to win,
we’re going to inch our way back. It starts right here, right
now.'”

The girls quickly responded to their coach’s tenacious
words by regrouping themselves en route to an improved 49.025
performance on the vault.

“They didn’t bury their hands in the sand,”
Kondos Field said. “They fought hard and got themselves
together.”

After closing in on the Wildcats’ lead after a clean
showing on the floor, the Bruins were forced to deliver under
pressure during their final rotation. After freshman Jalynne
Dantzscher started off on the beam with a morale-crushing 8.550,
the remaining five gymnasts needed to be perfect on arguably the
sport’s most difficult apparatus to come out of Tucson with a
win. Senior Kate Richardson and sophomore Jordan Schwikert
responded with back-to-back scores of 9.875. However, the Wildcats
outmatched the Bruins by amassing a combined score of 49.075 on the
floor to clinch the victory.

With last season’s phenomenon sophomore Tasha Schwikert
and the team’s co-captain Michelle Selesky still inactive due
to injury, the team’s freshmen have received extraordinary
amounts of meet experience due to a depleted roster.

“If Tasha was healthy, [Melissa] Chan was healthy, if we
had a healthy team, our freshman would’ve learned half of
what it had to from the sidelines,” Kondos Field said.
“It’s hard to go through a meet like this. We
should’ve done better, but we never gave up. This experience
was just another experience for our young team.”

Inexperience was evident on the uneven bars as a change in
routine proved to be a factor in the young team’s failure to
take advantage of its scheduling circumstances.

“The last few weekends, we really pumped ourselves up
mentally for those meets,” Kondos Field said. “We just
let down mentally for this meet, not thinking that we would lose
our focus.”

The team will seek to regain its concentration as they return
back to Pauley Pavilion in a dual meet against Stanford and San
Jose State on March 5.