After a hotly contested Pac-12 championship meet, the No. 6 ranked Red Rocks are heading to Baton Rouge for a chance to go to the NCAA Championships. The Red Rocks put up their best score of the season, breaking 198+ but were topped by UCLA for the Pac-12 Championship.
The Red Rocks have had continually gotten bigger scores over the last handful of meets, and here’s hoping that trend continues going into Regionals and Nationals. Things are being mixed up a bit this year with the format of Nationals.
The top two finishers from the four regionals (Baton Rouge, Ann Arbor, Athens and Corvallis) will advance to the 2019 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships in Ft. Worth, Texas, Apr. 19-20.
This season marks the first time that the women’s gymnastics tournament will feature a four-team format all the way through to the NCAA Championship finals. It is a change from the six-team format used from 1987-2018 and other configurations utilized in the 1970s and ‘80s. The new format eliminates the two bye rotations that were necessary with six teams, while still allowing 36 teams to qualify into regionals.
So goodbye to the Super Six format, so the Utes really need to be on the top of their game going into Nationals. The Utes have went from 4 to 6 in the rankings, and hopefully some national judges give the Utes some favorable scores, and hopefully they don’t fall in love with UCLA like every other judge seems to.
Here are the Regional breakdowns:
Ann Arbor Regional
Session I
7 Michigan
10 Alabama
Penn State
Ohio State
Session II
2 UCLA
15 Nebraska
West Virginia
Illinois/Central Michigan
Athens Regional
Session I
8 Georgia
9 Kentucky
Missouri
Iowa State
Session II
1 Oklahoma
16 California
Maryland
NC State/New Hampshire
Baton Rouge Regional
Session I
6 Utah
11 Minnesota
BYU
Arkansas
Session II
3 LSU
14 Auburn
Arizona State
George Washington/Lindenwood
Corvallis Regional
Session I
5 Denver
12 Boise State
Washington
Southern Utah
Session II
4 Florida
13 Oregon State
Stanford
Iowa/Arizona