In a landmark moment for the sport, Oregon participated in the first televised meet in acrobatics and tumbling history Thursday night.
Unfortunately for the Ducks, they ended up on the wrong side of the scoreboard in their most important meet thus far.
Oregon suffered a 282.025-280.180 loss to the the No. 1 ranked Baylor Bears in their final home meet of the season. It was the Ducks’ second loss to the Bears this year and third straight dating back to last season.
“I’m very proud of our kids,” Oregon head coach Chelsea Shaw told GoDucks.com. “We were coming off of a very difficult week with a lot of injuries to some of our key athletes, so we made a lot of last-minute changes just last night.”
“For them to do what they did today, we were very proud.”
ESPNU was on hand to broadcast the meet as six Oregon athletes competed in their last meet at Matthew Knight Arena. Nicole Seybold, Sydnee Walton, Alexis McCallister, Jordyn Fox, Haley Garelick and Shelby Armstrong were all honored on Oregon’s senior night.
The Ducks led the meet until the pyramid event, when a mistake in heat one left them with a score of 8.10 on their first attempt. The Ducks scored a 9.7 and then a perfect 10 in their next two heats, but the mistake allowed the Bears to take a 97.00-96.00 lead into halftime that they would not surrender.
Baylor out-scored the Ducks 98.80-97.98 in the final team event to seal the win.
The Ducks will close out the regular season on April 4 when they travel to Asuza, Calif., to face Azusa Pacific.
After that, Oregon will prepare for nationals, where they will almost certainly encounter Baylor again.
“It wasn’t ideal to come away with a loss, but now they’re going to come together, put their heads down and work harder as we head into nationals,” Shaw said.