Teams: UC Davis vs. Arizona, San Jose State, Alaska Anchorage
Where: The Pavilion
When: Friday at 7 p.m.
Who to watch: Friday’s competition will be senior Erika Van Dyke’s last regular-season performance at the Pavilion.
The Sacramento native has earned all-conference honors in every postseason of her collegiate career and was the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation champion on beam in 2011. Her career-high score of 9.900 on beam is tied for the school record.
Van Dyke serves as co-captain of the squad alongside fellow senior Lauren Eller.
Did you know? The first set of Regional Qualifying Score rankings were released on Monday. UC Davis is ranked 9th in the Western region and 54th in the nation.
Preview: The Aggies will return to the Pavilion Friday night in a quadrangular meet against Arizona, San Jose State, and MPSF rival Alaska Anchorage. It will be UC Davis’ last home meet before the conference championship at the end of the month.
The team is returning after a successful away meet against Seattle Pacific, in which the Aggies saw improved scores on every event.
Most notably, last weekend was the first meet of the season in which UC Davis was not forced to count a fall on bars.
“Hopefully we’ve got ourselves into a groove coming down the final stretch with three regular season meets and the conference championships,” head coach John Lavallee said.
Aggie fans can expect an exciting performance Friday evening. In addition to UC Davis’ increased level of performance as of late, Arizona and San Jose State are both nationally ranked teams (No. 17 and No. 31 respectively) coming off of recent wins.
Arizona captured its fourth consecutive win last week with a score of 195.675 over Washington. San Jose State defeated both California and Maryland on its way to a score of 194.900 that was just short of the squad’s season high.
But UC Davis can be expected to rise to the challenge.
“We’ve got ourselves lined up physically, mentally and emotionally to finish this season off.”
— Kaitlyn Zufall
