The gymnastics team achieved three top-10 individual placements in the NCAA Regional Championships on April 5.
Junior Alina Cartwright tied for fifth place in the all-around competition, followed by sophomore Lisa Burt, who tied for ninth — both competed at regionals for the second consecutive year. Freshman Elena Lagoski placed ninth in the floor.
While LSU and Stanford qualified for nationals as a team, Cartwright lost her national qualifying position to Kent State’s Marie Case.
“I knew I didn’t make it because my coach told me ... I was disappointed for losing by half of a tenth (of a point) and it was hard to be happy for myself,” Carwright said.
Cartwright and Case tied for fifth place with a score of 39.325. For the tiebreaker, they took the highest scores of each gymnast and take the best one to move on to nationals — Case’s was a 9.900 and Cartwright’s a 9.850.
“I knew she had a good shot ... and losing in a tiebreaker is awful, but this will fuel her to be there next year,” assistant coach Nicole Curler said.
The three gymnasts were placed separately with other teams to compete, which made it difficult to support each other.
“When you travel by yourself and without your team, it’s difficult, but they did a good job of cheering for each other ... every routine we did, we hit,” Curler said.
No. 1 all-around seed Cartwright was placed to compete with the top-seeded team, LSU, and No. 2 all-around seed Burt was placed with second-seed Stanford.
“It was awkward going into a team where they’ve been together,” Burt said. “It was like I was the odd one out, but they were relaxed and laid back.”
Despite competing with athletes they did not know, Lagoski made the best of it competing with Iowa State.
“It was weird, but I cheered for them and they cheered for me,” she said.
Even though they were not competing together, Cartwright said they found ways to talk, watch the meet and cheer each other on.
“I was screaming across the arena to cheer them on and everyone looked at me, but every gymnast who was separated from their teammates did that,” Cartwright said, laughing.
Believing in her teammates and their talent, Lagoski said she will think of this experience as a positive one — even though it was her last meet of the year.
“I’m happy with how I finished, especially being in a hard division,” Lagoski said. “I was not where I wanted to be after, but I’m happy that I even made it this far.”
Although the team cannot have mandatory practices, many of the athletes are continuing to practice and get ready for next year’s season.
“They know they should’ve been at regionals as a team, and this will fuel them to not be in this situation next year,” Curler said. “We’ll make a few changes here and there, but we will work on being consistent — hit everything every time.”
