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Jan. 22, 2003
We opened the season last Friday at Arizona State. The weather was awesome, sunny and high 70's every day. We stayed at an AmeriSuites located right next to the Arizona Mills Outlet Mall, so everyone including myself spent all our per diem on "bargains". We went to the competition at the Wells Fargo Arena on the ASU campus with high hopes and eager to compete. We had an intrasquad competition the weekend before we left, and the team was looking extremely confident and ready for competition. Everything actually went well prior to competition, no scrambling around, everyone seemed focused and relaxed. We started out on the uneven bars. Junior co-captain Amy Metcalf was first up and gave us a fantastic opening routine to start the 2003 season to receive a well deserved 9.825. Tanya Powers and Carly Dockendorf scored 9.700 & 9.775, respectively, and Emily Pritchard anchored the event with an impressive 9.90. Unfortunately we had a couple of falls in the middle of the line-up so we ended up counting 1 fall. From bars we went to vault which ended up being our highest scoring event. Our counting scores on vault were 9.800, 9.825, 9.900, 9.900, and an impressive 9.925 from Freshman Kelly McDonald to give the Huskies a 49.350 team score which is an awesome first competition team score. We then went to the floor exercise. This was a very hard event, especially after scoring so well on the vault. Normally floor is one of our best events, but our routines seemed to lack the luster that we are so use to seeing. The only gymnast that was close to what I have seen preseason at workouts was junior Tacia LaBatte. She did an outstanding routine to receive a well deserved, if not underscored, 9.875. We had four falls on floor which is very, very uncharacteristic of Husky Gymnastics, and especially this team. Our last event was the balance beam. We had better beam in this meet than we had in our last intrasquad. Our top performer was Tanya Powers, and I whispered in her ear do what you do in workouts, and you may have the first Husky 10.00 on the beam. Tanya looked at me with a twinkle in her eye, smiled and said "I know". Tanya did a superb routine and had just the slightest, slightest break after her series and received a 9.900, which is outstanding for her first competition, and in enemy territory. If she had been from ASU it would have surely been a 10.00. We lost to ASU 194.150 to 197.300, but there is a ton of improvement possible for this team. I think this is 197.000 PLUS team. Trust me you will be impressed by this team. So tell all your friends to come to Friday's competition against the Arizona Wildcats and San Jose State, and let's make some noise!!!!!
Until next week. GO HUSKIES
Bob Levesque
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