Athens, Ga. • Even with the loss to Georgia, Utah’s gymnastics team may have succeeded in finding the combination it needed to help Georgia Dabritz on the balance beam.
Utah flip-flopped Dabritz and Mary Beth Lofgren in the lineup, putting Lofgren fifth and Dabritz last.
Utah coach Greg Marsden said he did so to take the pressure off Dabritz. The move worked, with Lofgren winning the event with a 9.9 and Dabritz scoring a 9.775.
"We felt like we needed to do something different," Marsden said. "We knew we had five dependable gymnasts in front of her, and it seemed to work. That is something we might look at sticking with."
Dabritz said she liked being the anchor. Normally it is a pressure situation, but not when the others hit, Dabritz said.
"I could just go up there and relax and do my thing," she said. "I felt a lot better about it."
Winning again
Even in one of the most hostile arenas in the nation, Tory Wilson was unbeatable on vault.
Wilson scored a 9.95 on the vault to tie for the individual title, her ninth in a row.
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While the Utes don’t keep records of single-event winning streaks, Wilson’s streak matches Ashley Postell’s from 2008, the most recent such streak.
Even though she is the No. 1 vaulter in the nation with a 9.955, Wilson was hard-pressed to keep the streak going Saturday.
Georgia’s Brittany Rogers and Lindsey Cheek both stuck their vaults to score 9.95s, helping Georgia to its second-highest vault score of the year. Wilson has set a national standard by getting more amplitude and distance than anyone else on the apparatus, along with a perfectly executed landing.
She delivered again on Saturday. The slight fault was her landing, in which she came down with legs slightly apart.
It was enough to deny her a perfect score, but not a tie for first.
Of note
Lofgren earned a 9.75 in exhibition on the uneven bars. … Becky Tutka had a 9.8 and Haley Lange had a 9.825 on the vault in exhibition. … The sellout was the third for Georgia this season.
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