Denver gymnastics won in their 2024 home opener versus Arizona State on Sunday 196.9 to 196.375. DU suffered lots of little mistakes and a couple of falls. Plus a few key athletes are either injured or not fully recovered from injuries. Overall it didn’t look like Denver was ready for competition this week. There is a lot of room for improvement and DU will need to start clawing their way up to have a chance at nationals again this year.

In week two of the 2024 season, 11 teams hit 197 points or higher:
Oklahoma (197.900)
California (197.8250)
Michigan (197.7250)
Kentucky (197.475)
Arkansas (197.150)
LSU (197.150)
Ohio State (197.150)
Florida (197.100)
UCLA (197.100)
Alabama (197.075)
Auburn (197.025)

All of these strong results pushed Denver into the #10 spot the rankings.

In the meet versus ASU, Denver started on vault. There were no sticks on vault. DU does have four 10.0 start value vaults, which is great. But they need to get some sticks to improve their vault rankings.

On bars, DU had a few missed handstands, and form breaks, plus steps on landings. Senior Rylie Mundell looked like she got a spot on her shootover, but the judges didn’t see it that way, and she scored a 9.95 for first place.

The top event of the afternoon was beam for DU. There were lots of clean routines with another few hops or steps on dismounts. Mundell seemed to struggle with her beam routine. She was substituted in for senior Rosie Casali, who competed on the other three events. Mundell had three bobbles in her routine and landed short on her dismount. Her score of 9.725 was high for the performance. Luckily the team had no falls or major faults, so Mundell’s score was dropped.

The last event of the evening for DU was floor. Denver looked tired on floor. There were short landings and even a fall. Some of their jumps weren’t to the full position or fully completed turns. Denver had to count two scores in the 9.7s. Unfortunately these were not top 10 performances. Yes, we beat ASU. But realistically ASU has no shot at making nationals.

Does Denver have a shot at nationals? Not with performances like today, especially with the scores other teams put up across the country. I’m not putting any of the blame on judges here. It was lackluster performances by DU, barely eking out a win in a sport where wins and losses don’t matter. Only team scores compared to other teams across the NCAA matter.  DU needs to bounce back from this in hopes that the first two weeks’ scores can be dropped in the NQS calculations after week six.

I’ve seen Denver in practice stick landing after landing, but they always struggle to stick in Magness. I think this is a team who would benefit from getting meet week practices in Magness. The floor is different there on top of the ice surface, and a lot of the equipment is different than they practice on. The environment in Magness is different and the visual queues they rely on are different. We should be nailing landings at home, but we just don’t. Sticking in practice isn’t good enough. Sadly the facility availability is hurting the home advantage for this team. Hopefully they can get the needed repetition through home meets and improve as the season goes on.

Next week is Denver’s toughest home meet of the season, facing Oklahoma, UCLA, and Stanford. They need to come back strong and polished.

Photo by Adri Meyer:
https://www.instagram.com/pranaphotos_