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2025 Gator Gymnastics - National Title Contender

ocalaman

Bull Gator
Sep 4, 2002
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The season starts Friday, Jan. 10 with a Quad Meet at Exactech Arena on SEC+ at 6:45 PM. The pre-season #3 Gators host #11 Michigan State, #23 Nebraska and North Illinois. Florida suffered a couple of key injury losses to potential All Americans Kayla DiCello & Skye Blakely, who both suffered ruptured achilles' tendons during last summer's Olympic trials. But even with those devastating losses, the team has enough talent to still compete for SEC and NCAA titles. Here are links to their full schedule and roster:

 
I believe UF coach Jenny Rowland also appeared as a gymnast in the 1986 movie, American Anthem, with Mitch Gaylord and Janet Jones(Gretzky) as lead actor/actress, or did I read that wrong? Her maiden name is Ester.
 
We underperformed on the uneven bars and our best gymnasts, Leann Wong, scored 6th in both the florr and beam, thus we lost by .100 to defending national champs LSU at their place. This team still is one of the best in the nation and can win the national title.
 
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I think a major thing that hurt us last night was that this was only the Gators 2nd meet and our first meet was a Quad that didn't have another Top 10 team in it. We chose not to schedule a match for opening weekend 2 weeks ago. Meanwhile, LSU opened with Iowa State and then competed in a Quad meet that included #1 Oklahoma, #4 Utah and #6 California. They were just a little sharper than Florida, although talent-wised, we're pretty even. College gymnastics is fun to watch, though, although understanding the complicated scoring is beyond my comprehension. And this year the NCAA has imposed even tight scoring criteria that is lowering scores across the board.
 
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#2 Gators win a tri-meet in Morgantowen, WV this afternoon. They weren't great, but good enough. Leanne Wong won the All-Around with her best meet of the year and Grad Transfer Selena-Harris Miranda continues to be our consistent star.
 
The #2 Gators went to Arkansas Friday night to take on #15 Arkansas and were cruising with a big lead of .650 going to the final routine. Arkansas was solid on the floor, not great, and Florida came into the meet as the #1 beam team in the nation. But the Gators totally collapsed and lost the match by .625. That's a gigantic turnaround in 1 routine that almost NEVER happens. But They had 2 girls fall off the beam and 3 others with bad wobbles, causing them to have to count 1 fall score and 3 more under 9.8. In fact their highest score on the beam was 9.80, which is totally unlike Gator gymnastics, who usually has 3 or more score on all event 9.90 or better. One of our most consistent performers, Sloane Blakely, missed the match probably due to illness that has been going through the team. But we are so deep and talented, to score that low in any routine hasn't happened in many years. Anyway, here's the article.

 
The #2 Gators went to Arkansas Friday night to take on #15 Arkansas and were cruising with a big lead of .650 going to the final routine. Arkansas was solid on the floor, not great, and Florida came into the meet as the #1 beam team in the nation. But the Gators totally collapsed and lost the match by .625. That's a gigantic turnaround in 1 routine that almost NEVER happens. But They had 2 girls fall off the beam and 3 others with bad wobbles, causing them to have to count 1 fall score and 3 more under 9.8. In fact their highest score on the beam was 9.80, which is totally unlike Gator gymnastics, who usually has 3 or more score on all event 9.90 or better. One of our most consistent performers, Sloane Blakely, missed the match probably due to illness that has been going through the team. But we are so deep and talented, to score that low in any routine hasn't happened in many years. Anyway, here's the article.

Meh. If we are going to have a mental fart, now is the time. Sharp is for the post-season.
 
I can only see they got screwed by the judges. Eff Arky!
When you lose by .550 that's a big, humiliating loss. Judges don;t cause that type of discrepancy. Arkansas did not score great. Their score was good, but ours was horrible. I watched the match and the judges did fine. We totally fell apart on our last rotation, fell off the beam twice and wobbled badly on 3 others. You can't come back from that.
 
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Meh. If we are going to have a mental fart, now is the time. Sharp is for the post-season.
I agree. However, my top priority is like Steve Spurrier's when he was HBC. Win the SEC title first and the national rankings take care of themselves. I think we've won 3 straight regular season SEC titles in gymnastics and with 2 losses our chances of repeating are very slim now. We still have a good enough team to win the national championship, but I like getting the SEC championship as well.
 
Despite having to count a very low score on the uneven bars, #3 Florida rebounded nicely and beat Auburn comfortably. Their team score on the beam, the disasterous routines that cost them the match last week at Arkansas, was the highest recored in the nation so far this year. Wong & Harris were 1-2 in the All Around.

 
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Disasterous meet at Oklahoma, with 2 stars injured and a very weak overall team performance. I can't remember the last time Gator gymnastics lost 3 SEC meets in a year.
They seem to be snakebit. Every year a key member is sidelined either by injury or the Olympic Games.
 
Gators had a GREAT match tonight. Sloane Blakeley lost for the season with injury last week. Wong & Harris were excellent as the team leaders, but the team depth showed up tonight.
 
2nd highest team score in UF history - best in the NCAA this year. Dominant way to end the regular season.
I just don't know about this team. They could go to the NCAA's and post the highest scores ever, or the lowest scores ever, and I wouldn't be surprised either way.
 
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I just don't know about this team. They could go to the NCAA's and post the highest scores ever, or the lowest scores ever, and I wouldn't be surprised either way.
They worked through a ton of injuries and inconsistent routines earlier in the season, as Coach Rowland was trying to find the right athletes to use to replace the 2 Gators lost during Olympic trials and then another key senior to a mid-season injury. They hit bottom at Oklahoma 4 weeks ago, but the last 3 weeks they've scored over 198.00 and it looks like they've found the right combinations to develop the consistency they need to make a run. Still, when they go through the formulas they use for their national rankings, Florida still went into last night's meet ranked #3 and with last night's score, look how close the Top 3 are in NQS:
1. Oklahoma 198.040
2. LSU 198.005
3. Florida 197.860
But you're right, anything can happen in the post season.
 
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