The Huskies faced Stanford and Cal Berkley at the Stanford Open last Saturday, January 27th. Stanford had the highest team score with a 414.10. Cal Berkley came in second scoring a 395.05 and the Huskies third with a 368.30.
The Dawgs started out very strong on the Pommel Horse with six hit routines out of seven improving our team pommel score by over four points! Our last event, Floor, also improved by just over a point from the last competition. The remaining five events ended up being a mixed bag of great routines, and uncharacteristic falls and mistakes made by some of the stronger routines we rely on to help the team score. Team Captain Nathan Tsuji came through for the team with five out of five hit routines. Nathan did not compete vault this week as he is still recovering from a major ankle sprain just two months ago. Senior Carl Meader was first up on our first event, pommels. Meader hit his routine placing him 2nd on that event for the Huskies. Junior Mike Sibley competed rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar. Sibley struggled on high bar, rings and vault but came through for the team on the parallel bars with a clean hit. Junior Jacob Jarrett hit four out of five routines. All five scores counted for the team. Jarrett performed a beautiful parallel bar routine as exhibition so he could be considered for the All Around where he placed 6th. Junior Ben Fisher competed on the parallel bars where he had an unfortunate fall on his Diomidov and couldn’t help the team score on his only event. Sophomore Ben Bloom also competed in the All Around, placing 5th, where all of his scores counted toward the team score, proving himself to be one of the most reliable Huskies on the team. Sophomore Daniel Gordon struggled on the rings but ended up helping the team score with his other four events, floor, pommels, vault, and parallel bars. Freshman Alex May helped the team score on vault and parallel bars but struggled on his other events. Freshmen Kody Dominguez had very strong performances on the floor and high bar, improving his scores by 1.0 and 2.0 respectively. Sophomore Paul Friedman made line-up for the first time on his favorite event, the vault. Friedman performed a very nice laid out Kazamatsu which counted toward the team score.
Although there were many unforeseen mistakes and falls this time around, we are very optimistic that these talented athletes will bounce back. The Dawgs have two weeks before they face Stanford and Cal again, along with our rivals, the Sun Devils. We will use these two weeks to improve on our difficulty and consistency so that we can compete at our highest potential. GO DAWGS!
Jeff Crockett
Assistant Coach