- The Red Rocks improved with a 196.450 score against Arizona State after struggles.
- Coach Carly Dockendorf highlighted resilience and determination in the team's performance.
- Key performances included Avery Neff's 9.950 on beam and Ella Zirbes' 9.925 on floor.
SALT LAKE CITY — The talent is undeniable, but the Red Rocks have yet to piece together a consistent meet this season.
"All the pieces are there. It's like somebody kind of took the puzzle and dumped it upside down, and now we're putting it back together," Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf said. "But all of that work is there, the routines are there, the scores are there. We've been seeing them, but we just have to keep putting that puzzle back together."
Just five days after recording a 13-year low team score in a win over Iowa State on the road, the Red Rocks bounced back at home to beat Arizona State (194.925) with a 196.450 score.
It was the third highest score of the year, but an improvement to what has been an up-and-down season for the 14th-ranked Red Rocks. And Friday night was no different.
The Red Rocks opened up its first home meet since Week 1 with a sub-49.0 team score on vault after being forced to count a handful of low scores when senior Makenna Smith sat down on an under rotated landing. Ella Zirbes (9.90) and Avery Neff (9.850) got the high scores, but the three other scores counted fell below a 9.775.
It didn't get better for the Red Rocks in the second rotation, either.
Before the bars rotation started, freshman Bailey Stroud sailed past the low bar on a transfer during touch warm-ups and fell to the mat. She fell again as she tried to finish the warm-up — this time on the high bar — which prompted Dockendorf to sub her out of the lineup and replace her with Clara Raposo.
But mistakes continued to befall the team as freshman Abbi Ryssman fell from the high bar, Zirbes scored a 9.725 after a couple mistakes, and then Raposo failed to get vertical on her handstands and had a big step back on her dismount.
It was looking like the Red Rocks were destined for another low score after an already frustrating couple weeks.
The second half of the meet was a completely different experience, though, and gymnast after gymnast bounced back to help the team build some momentum to closeout the night. It was far from perfect but was a major improvement from the first half of the night.
"Before tonight, I had talked to our team and I had told them that it's so easy to go out and be great and confident when things are going well, but it's really hard to stand back up and take a step forward when it's not. I was like, you get to be the author of the headlines," Dockendorf said.
"I want that to be a story of resilience and toughness and grit and determination," she added. "And I really did feel like that's what they did tonight. It wasn't about the score. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, but it really does take a lot to stand back up when things aren't going well and still hold yourself tall and keep your shoulders back and be confident and go in."
Dockendorf made her second substitution of the night going into beam, replacing Smith with Zirbes in a rare experience for the senior who has been the steady heand for the team over the years. But Smith was in "uncharted territory," Dockendorf said, and a change was needed to help her.
"We haven't been doing our normal job, so it's putting her in a position where she feels like she needs to be better for the team, which creates more pressure and stress for her to have to be great," Dockendorf said. "I do think that she's aware of it, and as our team continues to be a little more consistent, it's going to take the pressure off her to try to be something more than she needs to be."
It was a situation where fellow senior Ana Padurariu said she could tell Smith was "nervous today starting off the meet, and she admitted it too."
"I was trying to literally just be fun with her," Padurariu said. "She loves to talk, she loves to dance, so that was the role that I took on — was just trying to be that light for her, and just telling her that she's the Makenna Smith and that one bad turn won't define her."
On beam, Elizabeth Ganther got things rolling with a 9.80, and the scores continued to improve from there.
Zirbes fell off the beam in the third spot as part of her leap series, but Ryssman bounced back from her fall on bars and scored a 9.90. Padurariu stabilized the rotation again with a 9.850 as Avery Neff sent the Huntsman Center crowd to its feet with a nearly perfect routine for a 9.950.
And with Camie Winger in the anchor spot, the Utah native closed out the rotation with another much-needed 9.90 to help the Red Rocks rebound going into the final rotation.
"Today, obviously, didn't go exactly how we wanted, but you're not going to get from zero to 100 overnight. That's just it's not realistic," Neff said. "So I'm really proud of everybody and just putting the hard work and grit in to every single turn. Even when things didn't go our way, we still stuck with it and trusted each other and trusted ourselves — mainly that when somebody made a mistake, it didn't define our gymnastics."
The team used that beam momentum and carried it into floor, where the Red Rocks finished with a season high 49.300.
Zirbes got some redemption in the fourth spot to top the team scores with a 9.925, while Neff added a 9.90 in the second spot. Even freshman Sage Curtis, who served as the team's anchor Friday, closed out the night with a 9.80 in her first-ever counted routine for the Red Rocks.
It all resulted in another victory for the Red Rocks, but more importantly it was an opportunity for the team to see some positive momentum to closeout the night, Dockendorf said.
"I think that's kind of been our pattern," Dockendorf said. "We've had two great events and two that maybe aren't so great. It typically ends up being the first couple that we do that aren't great, so that is going to be important for us to be able to come out swinging first rotation.
"Nobody cares more about getting better than the team and our staff," she said. "And training was hard. ... We can't expect to go from where we're at to just scoring exactly what we know we're capable of. I think that's like great to think about, but I think we're going to be disappointed if that's what we're looking for. So I really did feel like we made some steps forward."
Team score
No. 14 Utah
- Vault: 48.925
- Bars: 97.750 (48.825)
- Beam: 147.150 (49.400)
- Floor: 196.450 (49.300)
Arizona State
- Bars: 48.675
- Vault: 97.550 (48.675)
- Floor: 146.150 (48.600)
- Beam: 194.925 (48.775)
Red Rocks scores
1st Rotation: Vault (48.925)
- Clara Raposo: 9.775
- Ella Zirbes: 9.900
- Ashley Glynn: 9.750
- Makenna Smith: 9.325
- Zoe Johnson: 9.650
- Avery Neff: 9.850
2nd Rotation: Bars (48.825)
- Makenna Smith: 9.825
- Abbi Ryssman: 9.100
- Ana Padurariu: 9.850
- Ella Zirbes: 9.725
- Clara Raposo: 9.625
- Avery Neff: 9.800
3rd Rotation: Beam (49.400)
- Elizabeth Gantner: 9.800
- Abbi Ryssman: 9.900
- Ella Zirbes: 8.725
- Ana Padurariu: 9.850
- Avery Neff: 9.950
- Camie Winger: 9.900
4th Rotation: Floor (49.300)
- Ashley Glynn: 9.775
- Avery Neff: 9.900
- Zoe Johnson: 9.825
- Ella Zirbes: 9.925
- Makenna Smith: 9.850
- Sage Curtis: 9.800
