Over spring break, the Hawkeye gymnasts, like many of the university’s athletes, didn’t get quite the break most students received — on March 11, the men hosted the last meet in Carver-Hawkeye for the 2018 season, while the women hit the road.
After seeing the musical Wicked on March 15, the inspired women’s team showed up in Piscataway, New Jersey, for the Big Five meet and put together a solid second place.
“I was very proud of how the [gymansts] handled themselves with the adversity; they had a blast and stayed focused on being themselves,” said women’s gymnastics head coach Larissa Libby. “As long as you stay together, you are unlimited. You can be the greatest team the world has ever seen, and as long as you stay together, there’s nothing anyone can do to touch you.”
While No. 7 Michigan took the top spot with a stunning score of 197.225, Iowa, in second, wasn’t too far behind, with a final score of 195.275. Defying gravity, the GymHawks usurped both No. 22 Minnesota and No. 25 Penn State and came out on top of the meet host, Rutgers.
Iowa posted high scores in three of the four events, without an individual gymnast claiming an event title or breakng a personal record.
“Our beam team had a rough night, but we will come back with a vengeance,” Libby said. “When we put those four events together, it’s going to be awesome. We are in the night session next week at the Big Ten Championships, so we have another shot to prove ourselves.”
Similar to the women’s team, the No. 9 men’s gymnastics team toppled an opponent over spring break, making Senior Night a triumph.
“[It] went almost exactly as we had planned it to go,” said men’s gymnastics head coach JD Reive following the meet. “We came out and found our rhythm. We made some adjustments to the lineups that worked really well, and we hit pretty much everything we did.”
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Despite being outranked by No. 6 Minnesota, the Hawkeyes took the lead right away and kept it that way the entire meet. The Gophers and No. 11 Air Force didn’t stand a chance.
The Hawkeyes won four event titles. Senior Austin Hodges won in both pommel horse and parallel bars, junior Jake Brodarzon won in rings, and senior Dylan Ellsworth won in vault. Freshman Bennet Huang, named as the NCAA Freshman of the Week for his performance, and Ellsworth placed first and second in the all-around.
The final score for the tri meet was 405.950-400.750-388.600, Iowa-Minnesota-Air Force. The win snapped Minnesota’s five-meet winning streak against the Hawkeyes.
“We counted a couple of falls here and there, but not eight like the previous weekend,” Reive said. “The score showed that, the confidence level showed that, and the improvement showed that. We’re getting some really good things happening consecutively over the weekends. We did what we needed to do to keep progressing forward at this point in time. I’m very happy with the performance.”
Unfortunately, two days earlier the women were unable to say the same as they kicked off their spring-break competitions. In their meet against Iowa State and Missouri, the women took third, and Iowa State was the usurper. The final score was 196.700-196.050-195.600, Iowa State-Missouri-Iowa. Despite the loss, the women registered a season-high team score on bars.
