TUCSON, Ariz. – Arizona will compete at the NCAA Corvallis Regional on Thursday, April 4 at 3 p.m. MST. This will be
John Court's first time taking the team to the NCAA regional competition as a head coach. The GymCats will compete in a first-round match up against Big 10 opponent Iowa to determine who will advance to Session 2 of Round 2 on Friday, April 5 against Florida, Stanford, and Oregon State.
"We are excited about the new postseason format and know that Oregon State will host a first class regional. Iowa is an excellent program that consistently has been at regionals for over a decade. We are looking forward to the challenge and its nice to have some familiarity with the location.
Session one of the second round will include Denver, Washington, Boise State, and Southern Utah.
"As a program we are showing growth and having seven routines automatically qualified in the second round shows that," said head coach
John Court.
Five GymCats will be competing as individual competitors with guaranteed spots in session two of the second round. Juniors
Christina Berg,
Maddi Leydin, and senior
Haylie Hendrickson will compete in session one of the second round. Berg will rotate with Boise State and compete on the uneven bars and floor, Leydin and Hendrickson will rotate with Washington. Leydin will compete on vault and floor and Hendrickson will compete on the balance beam. Junior
Heather Swanson will rotate with Oregon State and senior
Danielle Spencer will rotate with the winner of the first-round competition in session two of the second round. Swanson will compete on vault and Spencer will compete on the uneven bars.
"One thing that we learn as a program is that we have to own our mistakes," commented Court. "We are a more competitive team then we showed at Pac-12's and want to apologize to the Wildcat Nation. Regionals is 'new life' but also a great experience to build next year's team. The qualifying is a step in the right direction, and we look forward to bringing our best this weekend."
The top two teams in session one and two of Friday's competition will advance to the round of 16 on Saturday. The top two teams in the regional competition will receive a bid to the NCAA Championships in Fort Worth, Texas.
The top two all-around competitors not on a qualifying team and each event winner will also receive a bid to the national championships. The top 36 teams in the country based on the regional qualifying score (NQS), earn spots at the regional competition.
After not advancing to the NCAA regionals competition in 2018, the GymCats are looking to build momentum after competing in the Pac-12 Championships last weekend.
Stay connected with Arizona Gymnastics!
You can follow the team at arizonawildcats.com/gymnastics, on Facebook (Facebook.com/ArizonaGymnastics), Twitter (@ArizonaGymCats) and Instagram (@arizonagymnastics).
