Ahead of this week’s regional competition in Arkansas, the Oregon State Gymnastics team is preparing for their 49th consecutive postseason appearance the same as always, trusting themselves and staying focused.
“Postseason is the time to have had all of your learning experiences in the regular season and really trust all of your timing,” said Sage Thompson. “Trust your training and trust everything and put it all together.”
Oregon State University will face off against Louisiana State University, University of Minnesota and either Boise State or Brigham Young University, pending a match up of the two on April 4. Kentucky, Arkansas, Arizona and Nebraska will also be competing in the regional, with the top two teams from each session advancing to a competition on April 6 at 3 p.m. PST. From there the top two advance to nationals in Fort Worth Texas, April 18-20.
The Beavers will be competing against all out of conference teams in the first round but Head Coach Tanya Chaplin said competing out of their region is not a surprise nor a concern.
“It doesn’t matter what region you’re in, you know you always just need to focus in on what you can do,” Chaplin said.
The team enters regionals off of a strong conference competition on March 17 that closed out their regular season, including a 10.0 from Jade Carey, contributing to a season high score of 49.550 on floor. The Beavers also have a combined 37 event titles with eight PAC-12 weekly awards and a relatively young roster with only two seniors – Sydney Gonzales and Ariana Young.
As for the lineup, Chaplin said the team is approaching the meet on a day by day mindset but have Carey, Thompson and Sophia Esposito slated to compete in the all around.
This will be Thompson’s first time competing in the all-around postseason and an obvious first for Esposito as a freshman on the team.
Esposito, Thompson and Carey all received honors following the regular season. Esposito was named PAC-12 Freshman of the Year and All PAC-12 vault honorable mention, Thompson as All PAC-12 uneven bars honorable mention and Carey as All PAC-12 first team bars and balance beam honorable mention.
“The coaches and staff do a really great job of preparing us, especially with the all-arounders finding a really good balance of how to prepare us physically and mentally while also making sure we don’t overwork ourselves,” Thompson said.
According to Chaplin the biggest challenge for the team is staying relaxed and not getting ahead of the eagerness to compete as there is a small break for the athletes between regular seasons and regionals.
“They get so excited that you just want to push and push and push and you have to kind of bring it down a little bit and really focus-in clearly on the numbers,” Chaplin said. “We just want to start competing again and we’re so used to competing each week so having that week off in between drags it out a little bit.”
The team has been running through their competition order on each event during practices and ran through an in-gym intersquad, a practice Chaplin said is designed to get the team into the feel of the competition to avoid any surprises.
“We’re excited just to get moving in and get down to Fayetteville and get everything started,” Chaplin said.
