MU gymnasts get bad taste out of mouth
Missouri wrestler Nick Marable grapples with Oklahoma’s Tyler Caldwell as MU gymnast Alex Gold does her floor exercise.
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Missouri’s gymnastics team held up its end of last night’s fourth annual “Beauty and the Beast” event, cruising to victory over New Hampshire 195.125-192.875. But merely outscoring their visitors from the Granite State was not the night’s objective — not after last week’s performance at Nebraska.
GYMNASTICS
MU 195.125, NH 192.875
The Tigers stumbled badly in Lincoln, Neb., last Saturday, bottoming out with a ghastly performance on the floor exercise, a team score of 47.65, their lowest on the floor in four seasons.
But on Monday, MU regrouped for practice and got out the erasers.
“We touched base on it Monday,” said freshman Lauren Swankoski, “then said, ‘Hey, here’s another week for us to shine and show off.’ We put that behind us, learned from it. We learned, ‘Don’t count on the scores, count on the performance you’re giving and show it off.’ ”
A few stumbles reappeared last night at the Hearnes Center as the No. 14 Tigers shared the floor with the MU wrestling team, but with 4,041 in the stands, Coach Rob Drass’ gymnasts mostly expunged last week’s struggles.
“We struggled on floor at Nebraska,” Drass said. “After beam, I think, there was a growing period tonight. They let go of the scores. They let go of everything else. It was about the performance more so. When it’s about the performance, the scores come, instead of getting the cart before the horse.”
No one took that message to heart more than Swankoski. Last night, the freshman’s bumpy relationship with the balance beam had another jarring episode as she fell off the edge of the apparatus after a series of flips, earning an 8.975. She’s put together an otherwise sterling freshman season, but Swankoski had issues on the beam at Nebraska, too, where she scored an 8.450. She said she’s struggling with some recent changes she added to her routine.
“I guess it’s just putting it all together,” Swankoski said. “I know I can hit. I have the confidence. It just wasn’t my night tonight or last weekend either.”
As the Tigers rotated events, Drass found Swankoski on the mats and told her she was about to bust out her best floor routine of her career.
She wasn’t buying his pep talk.
“Oh, yeah right,” she huffed, Drass said later.
But his hunch was right. Swankoski pulled off a crisp performance and scored her best mark of the season, 9.875, good for second place overall, trailing only teammate Sarah Shire’s season-best 9.9.
“It felt great,” Swankoski said. “Every event is a new event — you can’t carry it over. So, you just scratch whatever happened on that event and go out and kill them on the next one.”
That was Shire’s game plan, too. The senior All-American didn’t escape the troubles at Nebraska either last week, taking a fall on the uneven bars to go along with three event titles and the all-around crown.
She recovered last night with strong scores in all four events but took just a smidge of satisfaction in the outcome.
Adding to her floor title, Shire won the vault (9.825) and split the beam with teammate Mary Burke (9.8). Shire edged Burke for the all-around title, scoring 39.275 to Burke’s 39.250. Burke captured the bars title (9.8).
“Last week we beat ourselves,” Shire said. “This week, we did good, solid performances. Maybe not the top of the line. Maybe not the most crisp, most clean we can, but we hit solid routines.”
New Hampshire junior Katie Lawrence had her team’s highest individual finish, taking second on the bars (9.775).
Reach Dave Matter at 573-815-1781 or e-mail dmatter@columbiatribune.com.
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