DU Gymnastics hosted an open practice on Friday, welcoming fans to the practice gym, and showing off new routines and skills. The team is at the halfway mark of their preseason practices and is looking good! They have welcomed four freshmen this year who all look like they can factor into the team’s lineups. The five returning seniors are perhaps the strongest senior class the Pioneers have ever had.

The team debuted their new floor routines and they are sure to be crowd pleasers. The DU choreography and music cuts continue to get better and better. This year they’ve all added audio cues for the crowd to yell “Let’s Go DU” in unison. I’m excited for the atmosphere in Magness when the crowd gets into it.

We also got to see some skill upgrades in work from the team. On bars, senior Rylie Mundell is working on a new release move combination that will give her a connection bonus. Senior Jessica Hutchinson showed an upgraded bars dismount that is rarely seen in NCAA gymnastics. It looked amazing and I hope she adds it to her routine. Junior Momoko Iwai showed that she is determined to have consistency on beam this year. She did at least ten beam routines in succession, no break, and stuck them all. She was working on her flic, layout step-out, layout step-out triple series which was solid. That’s big bonus for her. Will Momo be our next 10.0 beam queen?  I sure hope so!

This is also expected to be the final Big XII season for Oklahoma before they exit to join the Southeast Conference (SEC). After this season, the Big XII old guard will consist of Denver, Iowa State, and West Virginia. Believe it or not, with conference realignment, the conference may be stronger with the addition of Utah, Arizona, Arizona State and BYU which will actually add competitive depth. But, we’ll have to wait for that and battle Oklahoma for the Big XII championship this season.

The Pioneers will start their season with a free Intrasquad meet at Magness on December 20th. Their first regular season home meet will be at Magness on January 14th, versus Arizona State. The full home meet schedule was handed out on Friday, so it should be up on DenverPioneers.com soon.

Looking forward to an outstanding season! Let’s go DU!