SALT LAKE CITY — After nearly a month on the road, Utah gymnastics was back in town Friday night. To celebrate, the Red Rocks invited 15,558 of their closest friends to the Huntsman Center to watch them take on the Stanford Cardinal.
The hometown gymnasts did not disappoint the sellout crowd that gathered up on the hill.
“I’m super proud of them.” — Utah coach Tom Farden
No. 4 Utah handily defeated Stanford 197.750 to 196.725 to improve to a perfect 11-0 on the season. Utah is now one win away from becoming only the second team in program history to go unbeaten through the regular season (the other was the 1993 team).
The score of 197.750 was Utah’s second-highest score of the year, the team’s best score at home by far and better than the season-high score of all but five other teams nationwide. The Utes also set a new season-high score on vault with a 49.525, continued their excellence on balance beam with a 49.550 and, oh yeah, senior Kim Tessen earned a perfect 10 on vault.
“I knew she was going to let one loose,” head coach Tom Farden said. “She had been blasting in training, so it didn’t surprise me when she set that up. As soon as she hit that table, she knew it was good and I knew it was good.”
It was, for all intents and purposes, the homecoming everyone had hoped for.
“We love our fans,” said junior Alexia Burch. “And our equipment. And everything about Utah.”
And yet, that was just one of two very different types of reactions to the meet.
On the one hand, the Red Rocks were thrilled and understandably so.
It isn’t every day that you put up a score that high, one that will only do wonders for them in the national rankings. It certainly isn’t every day that a gymnast earns a perfect 10, either. Throw in an event-winning 9.975 on beam for Maile O’Keefe and Cristal Isa’s strong performance in the all-around (39.525) and it was a meet worthy of praise.
“I’m super proud of them,” said Farden.
On the other hand, he called the team’s performance “clunky.”
“I thought some of the meet was clunky,” he said.
That’s the thing about this team. Great will never be good enough. They always want to be better.
“We just kind of all talked about that,” said Tessen. “We are obviously all our own worst critics and we are not going to beat ourselves up too much. We had a lot of good highlights and that (score) will really help our NQS (national qualifying score). But, we are still working. We still need to hone in on some details.”
Most of the highlights came on vault and beam. Aside from Tessen’s 10, Cammy Hall scored a career-high 9.950 on vault, while Burch added a 9.90. On beam it was O’Keefe, Burch (9.90) and Abby Paulson (9.925) who shined.
“Vault went really well, obviously, with Kim putting the cherry on top,” Farden said. “Beam was great. I thought it was a pretty smooth set.”
The details that needed honing, meanwhile, were uneven bars and floor exercise-centered, where Utah scored a 49.325 and 49.350, respectively.
“Bars, we had good handstands, good work over there, up until the sixth athlete,” said Farden. “But again we were misfiring on those dismounts. Floor was a little flat. Wasn’t one of our better sets.”
Throw in injuries to Sydney Soloski and Jillian Hoffman — Soloski suffered an apparent quad injury on her meet-opening vault, while Hoffman was in a boot from the get go, thanks to an injured toe — and the meet, as great as it was, wasn’t all roses.
What it was, though, was a perfect example of how Utah straddles the line between celebrating greatness and needing to do more, to be more. So far this season, they’ve managed it just fine — Friday night perhaps better than ever.