Denver gymnastics’ second meet of 2025 was an action packed quad meet at Magness on January 12. DU took first place over Mizzou, Georgia, and Long Island U and improved their team score by over eight tenths and didn’t have to count any falls.
Final team scores:
- Denver 196.575
- Mizzou 196.1725
- Georgia 195.575
- Long Island University 188.075
This was Denver’s first of two quad meets at home which are always a lot of fun. When four teams compete, there is one team on each event during every rotation. Teams compete on their events simultaneously and there is always something exciting to see. In this meet, Denver stepped up their game, shook off the beam demons (mostly), and pulled off the win. Mizzou had the 5th best score of week 1, and they fell to Denver in week 2, showing the strength of the DU team. Georgia did not have a meet in week 1, so this was their first meet of the season. It was also the college gymnastics debut of Georgia’s new co-head coach, Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, who has coached multiple elite gymnasts including THE Simone Biles. The LIU Sharks are in their fifth season as a NCAA team and this was the first time they went up against Denver.
Rotation 1
Denver started on vault in this meet as the home team always does. Overall the team improved their vault score by 0.225. From the stands, the three stuck vaults and four 10.0 start value looked a lot better than week 1. But the highest score they ended up with was 9.875 from graduate student Rylie Mundell. Three Pioneers got 9.85s: junior Mila Brusch, sophomore Maddison Reidenbach, and fifth year Rosie Casali. These scores are solid, but will need to all be a tength higher to break into the top 10 in NCAA.
Mizzou started on bars and were pretty clean with no major faults. Their highest score was a 9.9. Georgia struggled on beam and had to count falls. But they fought back the rest of the meet and kept themselves in the running. LIU started on floor, but does not have routines that can keep up with the nationally ranked teams. One routine that caught DU fans’ attention was LIU grad student Ella Barrington who used the same floor music that was used by DU alumna Jessica Hutchinson in 2023 to honor her mother’s 1992 Olympic run. It was a bit of a nostalgic moment at Magness.
Rotation 2
Denver moved to bars for the second rotation. The team bars score dropped 0.25 from week 1. DU came into week 2 with the 2nd highest team bars score in the country (behind Oklahoma). All of their routines were hit and looked clean to fans. However, judges found minor mistakes here and there and gave the highest bars score of the day to Rylie with a 9.9.
Mizzou was on beam and continued the struggles that Georgia had in the first rotation. I started to think something was wrong with Denver’s beam, especially when the beam end cap fell off during one dismount. Missouri’s fifth year Helen Hu had a highlight reel beam routine with unique combinations and choreography. Hu became the first gymnast in the NCAA to score a 10.0 this year on beam on 1/17 at Oklahoma.
Georgia was on floor and I have to say this is the event where their head coaches need to adjust the most to compete in the NCAA. Their floor music was pretty stock (common music) and choreography lacked imagination. Georgia’s freshman Nyla Aquino was the standout with entertaining choreography and a great performance. The judges had a disagreement on her start value, so she obviously has things to work on, but look forward to seeing her in NCAA the next few years. Even if many of Georgia’s routines were not exciting, they still put up a team score of 49.0, which Denver later tied on floor.
LIU was on vault, but with all the other excitement in the arena, I didn’t catch much over there.
Rotation 3
Denver made their way to beam where they had three falls in week 1. The only way to go was up and they increased their team score by over a point. Senior Momoko Iwai started off the rotation with a solid stuck routine to wash away all the bad luck from week 1 and from the first two rotations. She scored the day’s high of 9.9. We saw the season debut of grad student Abbie Thompson with another stick. The only fall from DU of the day was sophomore Madison Ulrich, who kicked the end of the beam in her piked gainer dismount and fell to her knees.
Missouri was on floor and they had the floor party of the day. Even without the crowd behind them, they were in the groove and had outstanding music and choreography. Their tumbling was strong and high. Of note were sophomore Hannah Horton’s Michael Jackson mashup, and senior Jocelyn Moore’s ’90s hip hop and R&B mix, which were both wildly entertaining and impressive.
Over on vault, Georgia’s Aquino had a HUGE full twisting Tsukahara. This is the best tsuk full in the NCAA and we wish her the best of luck the rest of the season to put up stand out scores for that amazing vault. At this point I lost track of LIU altogether.
Rotation 4
Denver ended the day on floor. Similar to bars, the team score dropped 0.25 from week 1. Junior Cecelia Cooley hit the top score for the team on the event with a 9.9. Grad student Rylie Mundell took a few steps and went out of bounds for a 9.675, which had to be counted in the team total because of a fall later in the rotation. Grad student Bella Mabanta had a fall in her last tumbling pass, the same punch front she fell on in week 1. She also had some other error in her composition or skill value because her start value was only a 9.5. Madison Ulrich did her very open double back again and had a huge hop out of it for automatic deduction. She needs to add the double layout back from last year instead of that pass. Or anything else would be better.
Georgia looked strong on bars. They had multiple athletes do full pirouettes to tucked double back dismounts for bonus value. They put up their highest event score of the meet with a 49.35. Mizzou ended strong on vault. LIU unraveled on beam with a 45.975.
Denver’s third meet will be their first away meet at Arkansas on Monday, January 20. After week 2, Denver’s average team score put them ranked 13th. Five teams in the NCAA have already broken 197. Five more teams have scored above Denver in the 196 range. Denver started in a hole in week 1, but improved a lot in week 2. They need to continue to improve in order to break into the top 10 nationally. In one of the last meets of “week 3” on Monday, Denver will miss the official rankings cutoff, so won’t get to improve ranking this week. But they’ll get two scores in week 4 to hopefully move up. Lets Go DU!