ASU gymnastics lost to Penn State Friday night in their final home meet of the season 195.350-194.625, despite an increase in energy and an improvement on bars.
Friday afternoon, head coach René Lyst was put on an indefinite administrative leave, which gave assistant coach Ralph Rosso a chance to lead the Gym Devils.
“I think the emotion was just full of positive energy,” Rosso said. “We just wanted to make sure that all our focus and everything we did tonight was for those three seniors.”
Those seniors, Taylor Allex, Carissa Kraus and Allie Salas, all competed in their last meet at Wells Fargo for the Gym Devils.
The three went out with a bang, each one scoring a season high in at least one event.
“I can’t remember a meet ever being like this,” Allex said. “The energy was amazing. … Our goal was to send the seniors off with a good meet and I think that’s exactly what the team did.”
Allex won two events: On vault, she scored a career-high 9.900, and on the floor, she scored a 9.925 and taking first. It was her fifth time scoring at least a 9.900 this season.
She competed on beam for the first time since Jan. 18, when she scored a 9.025. On Friday, she improved that to a 9.700, breaking her season high.
Salas matched her career-high on beam (9.725) as well as in the all-around (39.100). However, she placed fourth in this event.
“Tonight was amazing," Salas said. "It was emotional, it was highs, it was amazing.”
Kraus had a season-high 9.775 on vault and scored a 9.775 on bars in her last home meet.
“Even though we did not get our highest score, I think we competed the best we’ve competed this entire year,” Kraus said. “You could tell the passion in everybody’s eyes, you could tell the fire that they had. I couldn’t be more proud of the team I am with tonight, especially on senior night.”
The Gym Devils set two season-high team scores on vault and beam with a 48.825 and a 48.650.
The high energy was evident as the team began on vault and set three new individual highs right off the bat.
Freshmen Heather Udowitch and Corinne Belkoff both set career-highs scoring a 9.550 and a 9.800 respectively. Kraus’ 9.775 was the third-highest in the event.
On bars, things finally clicked for the Gym Devils, Rosso said. Everyone showed improvements in scores from last weekend’s meet against UCLA.
“We worked on that throughout week and all the hard work that the girls put in definitely paid off,” Rosso said.
As ASU moved to beam and floor the energy continued to stay up. Udowitch matched her career-high on beam with a 9.775 and junior Beka Conrad led the way for the team in the event with her score of a 9.800, placing third overall. Belkoff matched her career-high with a 9.875 on floor, and placed second behind Allex.
Belkoff and Udowitch competed in the all-around for the Gym Devils alongside Salas. Both set season-highs with Belkoff scoring a 39.100 to tie Salas for fourth, and Udowitch came in sixth with a 38.500.
The increased energy and improvements are something Allex hopes will carry into the rest of this season, and Rosso agrees.
“We still have a job to do,” Rosso said. “We need to just keep our focus and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I think from here we go back, we analyze and then we find ways on every event, just little improvements from everybody.”
Reach the reporter at haley.stesiak@asu.edu or follow @haley_stesiak on Twitter.
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