Once again, the team event was the deciding factor for Oregon Acrobatics and Tumbling. Once again, after trailing for most of the meet, it would be down to the 100-plus points available in the final event to decide Oregon’s third meet of the season.
And once again, Oregon couldn’t finish the meet.
The slimmest of margins — a slip and a tumble in the team event — mean that the Ducks fall to 1-2 on the season after a 275.420-270.440 defeat to visiting No. 3 Quinnipiac (4-0).
Two weeks after a missed opportunity at No. 1 Baylor, the onus was on Oregon to use that time wisely. Head coach Taylor Susnara has emphasized the importance of her team’s mental preparation — and it would be that fortitude that was on the Ducks’ minds during that team event on Saturday night.
Quinnipiac competed just three days prior, on Wednesday in California against Azusa Pacific, while the Ducks waited nearly two weeks after their defeat in Waco, Texas to return to the mat in competition — though they haven’t been sitting around. “Acro (heat) five was completely different,” Susnara said. “That’s a skill that you don’t see very often competed within our sports, and so Ava Gowdy and Makena Carrion, I’m really proud of them.”
Faced with another difficult matchup against Quinnipiac, the Ducks needed a strong performance at home to boost their case ahead of the National Championships in a month and a half. That might sound like a long time, but Oregon has just three meets after Saturday’s meet — including a Friday-Tuesday series against Baylor and Azusa Pacific on April 5 and 9 — to prove that it belongs in the top slot.
“For me, number two (in the poll) is essential for the bracket,” Susnara said prior to the meet. “Remaining at number one or two is important — it’s not about being number one, it’s just how well we can finish, and so I tell the team not to focus too much on the rankings and more about what we’re doing and how we execute.”
The two went punch-for-punch through the compulsory heats: without any major mistakes, it was left to the judges to nit-pick at the athletes. After the four-heat event, Oregon and Quinnipiac were left separated by just 0.05points — about as close as it could get — with the Bobcats in front.
With the onus on Oregon at home, the acro event was key for a team that has its focus on grabbing the lead early. The mistakes were subtle — a Charlotte Lippa wobble in the six-element heat amongst them — and the Ducks fell further behind, a margin that held through the pyramid event, where the Ducks’ near-perfection was continually one-upped by an unrelenting Quinnipiac group. Both teams had start values of 10.00 throughout the first half — a bold move that Susnara foreshadowed ahead of Oregon’s meet in Waco — but the Bobcats’ victories continued, and they built a 0.300 point advantage at the half.
“With the raised start values, there is a higher risk of messing up, and I think that today, some of the things that went wrong were with the increased start values,” Susnara said afterwards. “I think that we lost a little bit of focus there — we may have let the nerves get to us.”
“After Baylor, we knew what we needed to work on, and we were ready to increase our start value throughout,” Susnara continued. “We’ll probably try and stay a little more consistent before increasing any further, but ideally by the National Championship, we’ll [increase it again].”
Oregon’s toss event brought it closer to its opponents: that 0.300 point margin was cut to 0.200, but a huge 9.800 outing from Quinnipiac in the third heat kept the Bobcats in the lead. Regardless of that lead, it was shaping up for a last-event decider.
Quinnipiac headed out to the team event with a start value of 106.57, and without any major mistakes, managed a 93.870 that nearly became a new season-best final score for the Bobcats. Meanwhile, Oregon began with a slightly higher start value — 107.94 — but looked less stable than their opponents. Tumbler Selah Bell, amongst others, took a fall in the midst of the chaos that saw the Ducks deducted a few more points: Oregon finished with an 89.140 in the team event.
“Quinnipiac hit a near-flawless routine, and so I knew that we were going to have to hit it well,” Susnara said. “We had some falls in there — I told [the team], ‘Lose with dignity, keep your head high, be a good sport’ and at the end of the day we just need to go out and work a little bit harder.”
Without the final-event burst that it had become accustomed to, the Ducks were unable to overcome the lead that their opponents sustained throughout the meet, and the final score stood at a near-season best for the Bears — 275.420 — to the Ducks 270.440.
Oregon has one more meet before it welcomes No. 1 Baylor to Eugene: a trip to Hawaii on March 24 that will serve as a final tune-up before that matchup with the Bears.
“[The message] is just going to be repetition for us,” Susnara said. “Mentally, physically, they’re talented enough. It’s just going to be checking in every single rep, every single time, without those big mistakes.”
