West Valley • Carly Dockendorf knew it was a perfect score before the judges had a say.
“That’s a 10. That’s a 10,” Dockendorf repeated to her team, after former No. 1 recruit and Utah Red Rocks star Avery Neff vaulted into a Yurchenko 1.5 and stuck her landing.
And she was right. The judges flashed the “10.0″ symbol in the air, and Neff secured the first perfect score of the college gymnastics season and the first 10 of her blossoming career.
“To feel that I was perfect today was an amazing, amazing feeling,” Neff said.
Neff’s score was the highlight of an up-and-down meet for the No. 5 Red Rocks, however. They finished fourth to Oklahoma, LSU and UCLA, respectively, in the first session of the Sprouts Farmers Market Collegiate Quad at the Maverik Center on Saturday with a 195.900 score.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Utah Red Rocks embrace before competing on the floor during the Collegiate Quad gymnastics event at The Maverik Center in West Valley City on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026.
Utah came out of the gates on their opening rotation with three falls on balance beam, finishing with a 47.875 overall score on the rotation — the lowest of the four teams in the first round of the event and the lowest the Utes have scored in a rotation since 2000.
The performance was enough for Neff to channel her alter ego “angry Avery” before her vault.
“I was like, ‘Do you know you’re going to get a 10 before you get it?’” Dockendorf said on Saturday. “She was like, ‘I was angry [because of how] we started.’
“Angry Avery can do pretty incredible things.”
The Red Rocks are hoping to use Neff’s vault performance to give them some momentum with the Best of Utah meet coming up on Monday.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah’s Makenna Smith competes on the floor during the Collegiate Quad gymnastics event at The Maverik Center in West Valley City on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026.
“It’s always good to help bring up the energy and things like that,” Neff said. “I think that’s exactly what it did. I think even our bars — even if we had some hiccups. But I think we’re just taking this into Monday and just having it fuel our fire for Monday."