Gymnastics posts its highest season score
Published Feb. 20, 2007
The MU gymnastics team received its highest score of the season with a win Friday night. In its first win since Jan. 12, the team beat the Centenary Ladies 195.325-188.925. For coach Rob Drass, there is pleasure in the score but work still has to be done.
"I think we are improving each meet," he said. "I think we're getting better. We still have some obvious issues that we have to deal with."
Drass said the team had done intra-squad competitions on beam in practice all week and hadn't had to count a fall. This means each practice rotation was limited to one or no falls.
"(We) dug a hole, and we've got to climb out of it," Drass said.
Both freshman Danielle Guider and junior Julie Abaray registered season highs in three events. Abaray won the individual titles in her three high events: bars, beam and floor. For Abaray, the meet was especially successful because she fell on beam last week against Southeast Missouri State.
"It feels great," she said. "I think I finally have started to get my confidence back on beam."
Guider's scores of 9.75, 9.8 and 9.825 on vault, beam and floor respectively, produced similar feelings.
"It feels pretty good," she said. "It feels like all my hard work is paying off."
Guider and Abaray both performed on beam following the falls, Guider after Khederian and Abaray after Bowman. But their strategies for following beam falls are very different.
"I don't really watch the people in front of me," Abaray said. "Just because I am over on the sidelines doing my dance and talking to myself while the other girls are going. Because for me on beam, I really have to stay in that moment and really stay focused."
Guider said she usually watches the competitor before her.
"I'm usually warming up on the side," she said. "But I do watch to support them, and then I know, when I get up there, what I have to do."
Abaray said if a gymnast falls, it's impossible not to know due to the noise teammates make. But both gymnasts said following a fall can even be positive.
"That gives me more confidence when I go because I know that it's my job to get the girl in front of me's back and to hit my routine like I know I can in practice," Guider said.
The team's star all-around competitor, sophomore Adrianne Perry, had a slight regression from last week. She scored a 39.325 after a 39.5 against Southeast Missouri State. Drass said she is more team-oriented.
"I think her focus is more on the team, not really her all-around score," he said. "I think she'd give away the all-around score, the all-around title, to get one more beam hit in there."
Perry said she was happy to hit all four routines despite a drop in score. As for the team, the season high score is a culmination of hard work.
"We've been working very hard to get that good score," she said. "So we're very happy."
As for Drass, another meet means another opportunity for the team to nail the beam and go to the next level.
"The fact of the matter is we can hit beam," he said. "We should hit beam, we're not hitting beam and I don't even know why. You ask any of the athletes, and they don't know why."