FORT WORTH, Texas – The University of Utah Red Rocks finished second in the nation at the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships this weekend, and their 197.800 is reportedly the highest the team has ever scored at a national championship.
According to information from University of Utah Athletics, the Red Rocks scored 197.800 overall to come in second place behind Florida, who scored 197.850. FOX 13 News caught up with the Red Rocks Sunday night as they landed at the Salt Lake City International Airport, see the video above for their comments on the season and the national championships.
According to tweets from Utah Athletics, the final scores for the other Super Six teams were Oklahoma at 197.525, Alabama at 197.275, Stanford at 197.250 and Auburn at 195.625.
According to a press release from the University of Utah, Georgia Dabritz's 9.975 on vault during Utah's final routine of the Super Six put the Utes in the lead with one Florida bar routine remaining, but the 9.95 from the Gator's Alex McMurty was enough to give Florida their third straight national title.
"I am so proud of our kids for fighting back and nailing those last three routines to make it so that Florida had to hit big on its final routine," said Utah coach Greg Marsden in the press release, referring to the 9.925s by Kari Lee and Kailah Delaney that led up to Dabritz's 9.975.
Marsden stated he was proud of what the team accomplished, especially given the injury suffered by Tory Wilson.
"What's not hard to take is I couldn't ask more from this group of kids," Marsden stated in the press release. "They couldn't have given anymore. If you could have said at anytime this year--especially after we lost Tory Wilson to injury--that Utah would take Florida or even Oklahoma down to the final routine and finish .05 behind, no one would have believed it. The only thing that could have made it better was one more tenth of a point."
Dabritz also made NCAA history, as she is the only gymnast ever to score a perfect 10 on the uneven bars in both the semifinal and the Super Six team competition. She is the only gymnast to ever record 10.0 in uneven bars during the preliminaries and only the third to do so in a Super Six event, according to the press release. During Sunday's events Dabritz scored a 9.9625 on uneven bars, earning a 10.0 from two of the judges. Dabritz had the highest score on uneven bars for all three days of competition.
“It feels great to be able to end my career this way,” Dabritz stated. “I just wanted to do one last bar routine for me and I couldn’t have asked for a better ending. It feels great to be at the top of the group I was competing against. We wanted to win first (as a team), but we are so pleased with second place.”
According to the press release, "Just two other gymnasts have scored back-to-back 10.0s on an event at the NCAA Championships and none in the last 20 years. Georgia's Leah Brown accomplished the feat on vault in 1996 and Hope Spivey on floor in 1993. "
The stellar work helped lift the team to their second place finish, and that performance also made Dabritz the individual champion in the uneven bars. She is the first Utah gymnast to win an NCAA individual championship since 2007, when Ashley Postell won the balance beam title.
Dabritz stated in the press release she was glad the team was able to follow up on a goal they set after last year's Super Six.
"One of our biggest goals this year was to not feel like we did last year (when Utah didn't make the Super Six). We accomplished that," she stated.
