Teams: UC Davis vs. Sacramento State, Bowling Green, New Hampshire
Where: The Pavilion
When: Sunday at 2 p.m.
Who to watch: As she is last year’s Mountain Pacific Sports Federation champion on bars, it should be no surprise that junior Lida Gehlen is leading the MPSF rankings. What is surprising is how big that lead is.
Gehlen currently has a Regional Qualifying Score (RQS) of 9.785 on bars, .040 ahead of the next MPSF athlete, the Aggies‘ own Tanya Ho. After her, Gehlen is a whopping .115 ahead of the third placer, who’s from rival Seattle Pacific.
An athlete’s RQS is calculated by averaging the second through sixth best scores of the season, as long as at least three of the top six are from away meets. With her RQS, Gehlen is sitting in a tie for 17th in the West Region and is in a position to advance to the regional championships.
Did you know? For redshirt junior Kayla Koch and senior co-captains Andi Dolinsky and Adee Schoffman, this is it: their last meet at the Pavilion.
“I still can’t believe I have one more home meet,” Schoffman said. “Not only that, I have three more meets in my gymnastics career. I’m going to miss being part of this team, and I have many memories to take with me.“
Preview: On Sunday, the Aggies will take on two first-time opponents in Bowling Green and New Hampshire as well as rival Sacramento State.
“We’d really like to beat [Sacramento State],” Dolinsky said.
To do so, the Aggies will need to put together all the pieces they’ve been working on all season.
“We’d like to pick everything up to that 48.5 mark,” coach John Lavallee said. “We’ve done that individually in each event, but we haven’t done that for every event at the same meet yet. So that’s really what we need to have happen on Sunday.“
While the last few meets have been on Fridays, having this one on a Sunday gives the Aggies a little more time to get prepared.
“It gives us some breathing room and time to fix things in the gym before going out on the competition floor again,” Dolinsky said. “It should be a really good meet for us. I’m really excited about my last meet at home, but it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to the Pavilion.“
– Alex Wolf-Root
