Photo by: Andrew Fielding
The No. 19 Denver Women’s Gymnastic team’s season came to an end at Magness Arena on Saturday night at the NCAA North Central Regional Gymnastics meet hosted by DU.
Although the team’s season comes to an abrupt end, two individual gymnasts will be heading to the NCAA’s national competition later this month.
Junior Brianna Springer and freshman Jorie Hall advanced to nationals as individual competitors.
Hall, a Denver native, earned a 9.900 on the balance beam last Saturday, which was a career- and meet-high on the apparatus.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” said Hall of learning she’d be going to nationals to compete on balance beam.
Hall said she viewed her performance on Saturday as her season coming full circle from the meet earlier in the year at Magness Arena, when she fell on beam. She said she had a little extra motivation this time around, because she wanted to redeem herself.
Springer, an Arvada native, will be competing in the all-around competition. She is returning to Nationals after finishing No. 11 in the all-around event last year, is glad to have a teammate joining her this year. She said she was excited for them to “cheer on each other” in Cleveland.
Despite delivering one of their best overall performances this season, the DU gymnasts finished fourth place out of a six-team field that saw Arkansas and Florida advance to the NCAA Championships after placing first and second in the competition.
The Pioneers finished with a final score of 195.625.
“This was one of the toughest regional championships in the country,” said head coach Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart in a post-game press conference. “I am proud of the team’s performance. For them to perform like that under pressure shows their character, their teamwork, their excellence and what they’ve done in and outside of the gym to advance to this point.”
Kutcher-Rinehart fully believes that both Hall and Springer will return from nationals as All-Americans, which would require each finishing fourth or higher on their respective apparatus.
There won’t be any issue at all with their motivation,” said Kutcher-Rinehart. “They’re self motivated [athletes].”
The NCAA Championships will be held in Cleveland, Ohio on April 22-24.
