The women’s gymnastics team traveled to Berkley, Calif. this past weekend to compete in the NCAA regional tournament. They competed against UCLA, the University of Washington and Arizona State.
Though the team was the highest-seeded team in this regional meet, the team faced adversity from the start but successfully completed a comeback. They rallied from last place after the first rotation to winning the regional semifinal and advancing to the regional final two days later.
Senior Bella Mabanta was the star of the meet scoring no lower than a 9.900 in both events she competed. A 9.900 or above was very hard to come by for all teams during this meet. DU scored a total of ten across all four events and only one of them came in the first two rotations.
After ending the first rotation in the fourth, the girls needed a push to bump them into the top two spots to qualify for the final two days after. They slowly crept up in position after each rotation but still held onto third after the second and third rotations. The fourth rotation while on the floor was the moment they needed to push themselves up in position and where five of the ten 9.900+ scores came from.
Vault:
As the highest seed in this region, the team was granted the Olympic order of events which is the same order that a home team competes. This means they started on vault. Their average vault score of the season was 49.360, but this rotation landed them with a 49.025, which matched their season low on vault and put them into last place.
Sophomore Mila Brusch led the team off with a 9.850. Both freshmen in the rotation Amanda Hargraves and Madison Ulrich had 9.800+ scores as well, scoring a 9.800 and a 9.825 respectively. The three seniors all scored 9.700+ with Rosie Casali receiving a 9.725 and Rylie Mundell and Jessica Hutchinson scoring 9.775s.
UCLA ended their vault rotation with a 49.150, ASU with a 49.200 and UW with a 49.150, putting UCLA in the lead following the first rotation.
Bars:
The team next moved to bars, which has been one of their top events this season, and they needed to continue that to move up in the leaderboard, and they did just that, scoring a 49.250 in the rotation. The lowest score in this event was a 9.800 which helped push them within 0.450 of first place and 0.350 of a qualifying position.
Casali led off the rotation scoring a solid 9.850 and both of the next two gymnasts, sophomore Kiley Rorich and Ulrich, also received the same score. Junior Mia Hebinck and Hutchinson both received 9.800s and Mundell finished the event, scoring a 9.900.
UW finished off their respective bars rotation with a 49.125, UCLA with a 49.075 and ASU with a 49.325, keeping UCLA in the lead but bumping Denver up to third and less than 0.500 from the lead.
Beam:
The third rotation was where the comeback came into view, leaving the three top teams within 0.125 of each other. The girl’s overall rotation score continued to increase with the beam scoring 49.425. Hebinck scored the highest of the meet thus far, and Mabanta improved upon that score to keep the girls within close distance of qualifying for the regional final.
Junior Momoko Iwai and senior Abbie Thompson started the rotation off and made their meet debut, scoring a 9.825 and 9.775, respectively. Hebinck scored a 9.925, which Mabanta improved upon just two routines later with a 9.950. Ulrich went between the two, scoring a 9.750 which was the dropped routine of the rotation and Hutchinson finished off the rotation strong, scoring another 9.950.
ASU ended their own beam rotation with a 49.250, UW ended with a 48.850 and UCLA ended with a 49.250. ASU jumped UCLA after this rotation, taking the number one spot and pushing down UCLA to two and leaving Denver in third, once again.
Floor:
The floor rotation was Denver’s best event this season and they needed to keep that up while they tried to push their way into a regional final qualifying spot, which they did and more. After having only 0.125 of a point separating the top three teams, it was anyone’s meet. The girl’s event score got even better than their prior rotation scoring a 49.575, and no one scored less than 9.825, both of which were very impressive feats.
The first three gymnasts of the rotation, Rorich, Iwai and Casali all scored 9.900. Mabanta continued to impress, scoring 9.925. Ulrich and Hutchinson finished their all-around scoring 9.825 and 9.950.
UCLA ended their floor rotation with the same score as Denver, 49.575, ASU finished with 49.375 and UW ended with 49.525.
With the stellar floor rotation, Denver was able to tumble their way to a meet victory scoring an all-around score of 197.275 to advance to the Sunday night regional final along with ASU, who scored a team score of 197.050. The other top-ranked seed UCLA, who was predicted to move on to the regional final along with Denver, was unable to qualify after scoring a 197.050. UW’s final all-around score was 196.650.
Denver continued their post-season run two days later, competing against ASU, Stanford and UC Berkeley and needed to finish in the top two to advance to advance to the NCAA tournament in Forth Worth, Texas. Cal ended up winning this final and the fight for second was close between Stanford and Denver but Stanford ended up taking the advancing spot after their final routine scored a perfect 10.0.
The team ended with a 49.400 on bars, 49.450 on the floor, 49.375 on vault and 49.350 on beam for a 197.450 total, just 0.150 behind advancing Stanford’s score of 197.575. This score was tied for the third-highest postseason score and also tied for the second-highest NCAA Regionals score in program history.
Although DU’s strong season has ended, the NCAA season has not. The semifinals of the championships will take place on April 18 in Fort Worth, Texas and the national championships will take place on April 20.
