The men’s and women’s teams will hit the road for competition this weekend.
By Mason Clarke
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The men’s gymnastics squad moved up to No. 6 in the national rankings this week, and its talent will be tested Jan. 30 in Oklahoma when they face the No. 1 Sooners and No. 8 California.
The Hawkeyes clearly will have their hands full, but their focus is on their performance.
“The whole thing is consistency at this point,” head coach JD Reive said. “We’re a pretty good team right now … we should continue to improve on individual performances.”
Last season, the Hawks finished sixth in the nation, and their scores through January have been ahead of last year’s to this point.
However, Oklahoma and Cal have been impressive this season.
The Sooners have a team average score of 446.375, more than 6 points better than No. 2 Stanford and almost 20 points better than the Hawkeyes.
Five of the top six all-around gymnasts in the nation compete for the Sooners.
Oklahoma also has the top individual scores in the country in the vault (Hunter Justus, 15.450) and parallel bars (Yul Moldauer, 15.800).
The Bears come in ranked only two spots behind the Hawks and have a top-10 all-around gymnast — something Iowa does not.
Barring a miracle, the Hawkeyes do not have a huge chance to come out of the tri-meet victorious, because the gap between the Sooners and Hawkeyes in potential score is essentially insurmountable.
That does not prevent the Hawkeyes from setting goals as they look ahead.
“Consistency in hits and consistency in that mid-430s score range is going to be very, very important,” Reive said.
Good signs for the Hawks include recent individual performances. Coming out of last weekend, senior Doug Sullivan holds the third-best pommel-horse score (15.400) in the country, and senior Jack Boyle moved up to the third spot in the nation on average high bar score (14.967).
The No. 29 GymHawks will travel to Maryland for a Jan. 31 dual with the Terrapins. Iowa is ranked No. 29 in the country, while Maryland is No. 41, but Hawk head coach Larissa Libby does not believe this meet is a lock for the team.
“I think they are a lot like us in that they are underrated,” Libby said in a release. “We competed against them a couple times last year, and I think they are well-coached, and they have great team dynamic. They are quite underrated in what they are capable of doing.”
Iowa is coming off of an impressive victory on Jan. 23 over then-No. 25 Ohio State.
The Hawkeyes finished that meet with a season-best score of 196.375, a mark that only 12 teams in the nation have topped this season.
Iowa will focus on hitting details and improving the scores more than getting victories.
“Wins and losses don’t matter for us; it is the score that matters,” Libby said in a release. “We could very easily go to Maryland and score 196.500 and lose. But I would be very happy with a 196.500 loss.”
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