Utah Utes gymnastics: Red Rocks tumble off beam, take sixth at nationals

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In Thursday's semifinals of the NCAA Championships, the University of Utah women's gymnastics team scored the best balance beam total of either session.

But it was on that event where the Utes' championship hopes ended Friday.

Seniors Daria Bijak and Jamie Deetscreek, who earned All-America honors on the event, fell during their beam routines, resulting in a team score of 48.425 — a drop-off of .825 from Thursday and the worst score by any team in Friday's Super Six competition.

Despite improving their scores from Thursday on the other three events, the poor beam performance was too much for the Utes to overcome, resulting in a sixth-place finish with a score of 196.225.

UCLA might have been too good for Utah to beat even if the Utes didn't have problems on the beam. The Bruins won their sixth NCAA title with a 197.775 performance, with the next-closest team, Oklahoma, finishing .5 behind them.

"(The Bruins) came out from the beginning of the season on a mission," Utah co-head coach Greg Marsden said. "Every team goes through ups and downs throughout the course of the season, but I don't think they strayed much from that all year."

The Utes started out on the uneven bars and bettered their score from Thursday by .15, finishing with a 49.3. It was Bijak who led the way with a 9.9.

After that, though, they went over to the beam, where things went bad quickly for Bijak and the Utes.

Bijak was the fourth to compete for Utah, and after a shaky routine from Cortni Beers, the team needed good scores from the back end of the rotation so it didn't have to count her 9.65. But Bijak couldn't stay on the beam, and Deetscreek suffered her fall in the next routine.

Marsden blamed the mistakes on the gymnasts trying too hard to recreate the high scores from Thursday.

"We were just on fire on bars. I couldn't be more pleased with the way we came out," Marsden said. "To be honest, we went over to the beam and just rushed things."

The other gymnasts made sure to lift the spirits of the seniors during the team's bye after the beam and finish the meet on a good note despite already being out of championship contention barring mistakes from all the other teams.