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Utah gymnasts overcome slow start to defeat Arizona State

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cristal Isa on the beam as the University of Utah hosts Arizona State, NCAA gymnastics in Salt Lake City on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020.

Utah’s young gymnastics team knows it is on a learning curve. The lesson learned Friday night? The power of one routine.

The Utes were off to a subpar start against Arizona State with several gymnasts taking steps on their vault landings. Then junior Alexia Burch landed her vault like her feet were covered in glue, earning a 9.95 score that not only won the event but gave the Utes the shot of momentum they needed in their 197.05-194.3 win over the Sun Devils.

“That fueled the fire a little bit,” Burch said. “I was thinking, ‘these are unacceptable scores,’ and I wanted to show these judges we deserved higher scores.”

After Burch’s big vault, Kim Tessen followed with a stuck vault of her own, giving the Utes a 49.15 on the event.

“We were sluggish on vault and then Lexie hit that vault and turned things around,” coach Tom Farden said.

The Utes weren’t without their faults in front of the sellout crowd of 15,558 in the Huntsman Center, but they avoided big mistakes and didn’t let the small ones turn into meltdowns.

Farden said the meet was indicative of a team looking to replace 14 routines from a year ago.

“We had some inconsistencies but that’s what we are going to work on and grow and become more experienced and confident,” he said.

The Utes totaled 49.275 on the bars with both Cristal Isa and Hunter Dula scoring 9.925s.

The event wasn’t quite as clean as it could have been with Maile O’Keefe (9.775) and Missy Reinstadtler (9.425) both having breaks, but Tessen gave the Utes a good ending score with a 9.825 routine.

“The momentum from vault carried over to our first few bars routines,” Farden said. “Then we had that dip.”

Utah’s balance beam lineup had its best showing thus far, scoring 49.3 with Emilie Blanc posting a 9.9 to lead off the team.

The Utes also posted three 9.875s from Burch, Adrienne Randall and Isa.

On floor, Isa and Abby Paulson led off with 9.9s and Randall and O’Keefe had 9.875s. Tessen (9.05) had a fall late in her routine and Sydney Soloski (9.775) stepped out, mistakes that were a disappointing way to end the meet.

“We had a pretty decent meet but I felt like we left a lot out on the floor tonight,” Burch said.

O’Keefe won the all-around with a 39.225.

Farden was disappointed the Utes couldn’t sustain the momentum they captured on the vault, but there were plenty of bright spots too.

The Utes worked hard in the bye week to clean up their bars and Farden saw improvement. He also liked that gymnasts who made some of the bigger mistakes often came back with a solid score later in the meet.

“That shows they had gymnastics amnesia,” he said. “You have to have that ability to turn it off and come back on the next event. We have a lot of young kids but we aren’t going to give them any excuses.”

It might be a positive sign that the Utes don’t sound like they want excuses.

As happy as they were for certain moments, they seem like a group determined to use their mistakes for motivation.

“We want to win nationals,” LeBlanc said. “We know our potential.”

The Utes compete at Arizona on Feb. 1, the first back-to-back road meets.