The No. 10 Oregon State gymnastics team returns to Gill Coliseum for its second home meet of the season, taking on No. 12 Stanford University Friday at 7 p.m.
Last week's low-scoring road win against the University of Arizona may have been a letdown after their inspiring upset over Oklahoma the week before.
"I'd say it was a little disappointing because I know what this team is capable of," said senior and 2011 Pac-10 Gymnast of the Year Leslie Mak. "We didn't quite get there, but at the same time, it's important that we make it into a positive thing and a learning experience, rather than a disappointment and letting that kind of change the way we view our team."
The Beavers still got the victory over the Wildcats, but their score wasn't where they wanted it to be. Their final tally of 194.825 wasn't ideal after scoring over 196 their first time out — a big difference in gymnastics scoring.
"Actually, our athletes did a pretty good job in the first three events and were headed down the path to score around 196," said head coach Tanya Chaplin. "We fell apart on beam. We will make sure we've learned a few lessons; try to take from it some things that we knew we could do differently going into the rest of the season."
None of the first four gymnasts scored higher than a 9.525 on beam, before Vivan and Mak scored a 9.800 and 9.950, respectively.
"It felt like a freak accident," said senior Olivia Vivian. "In practice we nailed all of our routines. This team – I'm so confident with everyone that steps up in lineup. I'm not really sure what happened with the four girls before me [on beam]."
The team now has to flush the memories from last Friday and move on, because for the third straight week, Oregon State takes on an opponent ranked in the top 13 nationally.
Stanford comes in on the heels of a victory over the University of Washington, scoring a 195.925 — a score that would have defeated the Beavers last week.
In the four times these two teams squared off last year, they split their victories at two apiece. OSU is, however, 22-4 against Stanford all-time at home.
The main focus for the week is going to be "building off of what we did the last two weeks and try to better ourselves this week against a really good Stanford team," according to Chaplin.
Injuries are starting to affect the Beavers going into their meet with Stanford. Freshman Chelsea Tang, who has proven to be a valuable addition to this team, will most likely be out of the meet with a sprained elbow. Also, Vivian has been under the weather, and it's still up in the air how much she will compete this Friday.
"I missed practice yesterday," Vivian said. "I've been really sick since Arizona. It just depends on practice this week I guess. If I had my way, I'd do all three [bars, beam, floor]."
With some of the struggles on beam and the injury situation, the one constant for this team right now is Leslie Mak.
The senior has scored exactly a 39.400 on all-around in both meets this season. Mak also ranks first in the nation for balance beam – thanks to her 9.950 on beam last Friday. Last week, Mak was named Pac-12 Gymnast of the Week. This week she received another honor: Pac-12 Special Performance of the Week, for her 9.950 on beam.
"She's started off really strong and she's very consistent," Chaplin said. "She's doing a great job as a leader. It's really nice to see that happening during her senior season. She's growing off of last season and it's wonderful to see her start off as strong as she finished last year."
Mak and the rest of the OSU gymnasts are hoping that the Arizona meet will be their worst score of the year.
"It seems like every once in a while, in the four years that I've been here, there's going to be one meet in the season that isn't perfect," Mak said. "And maybe that just happens to be the one, and we'll go off of that with more motivation, more determination to not let that happen again. Now we're making some adjustments in the gym to move on from that and learn from our mistakes."
It will help having the home crowd in front of the team once again, as it did when they defeated Oklahoma. The Beavers are going to try to get back on track soon, hoping to knock off a talented Stanford team for their third consecutive victory to open the season.
Warner Strausbaugh, sports writer
sports@dailybarometer.com
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