Forget basketball, SUU gymnastics team eying bracket upset in NCAA regionals


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CEDAR CITY — The first inkling Scott Bauman had that his Southern Utah University gymnastics team could put together a record-breaking season came in the summer of 2016.

While it wasn’t uncommon to see some gymnasts stick around the small college town to voluntarily work out, nearly the entire team remained. The only one not there was injured and unable to do the work anyway. That helped a squad of seven seniors and seven freshmen gel together — which isn’t an easy thing.

“It didn’t matter if they were walk-ons or whatever, they were all there busting their butts all summer long,” Bauman said. “You could see even the way they were even then that this team gets it. They get along, they’re pretty good. But they started pushing each other really hard back then. It was pretty cool.”

That effort led to rewards. SUU broke its team record for scoring in a meet not once, but three times. That included a 197.025 in its Senior Day meet against North Carolina State — its first ever 197 in decades of competition. Ten days later, Stacie Webb became the first gymnast in the program’s history to score a perfect 10 on an event.

That success culminated in a No. 18 seed, and the Flippin’ ‘Birds learned Monday they are headed to the Morgantown, West Virginia, regional on April 1. SUU will have a tough task with No. 6 Alabama, No. 7 Michigan, George Washington, host West Virginia and Kent State on the docket.

SUU learned its destiny in the month where millions fill out brackets trying to predict the outcome of the men’s basketball tournament. Gymnastics has its own bracket, too. The top two teams from each of the six regionals head on to the Nationals. SUU has never been there, but with the new territories the Flippin’ ‘Birds have reached in 2017, Bauman knows his team is capable of anything.

There’s always that mid-major team that destroys your bracket in hoops, and SUU is trying to be that team in gymnastics.

“This team is still — they’re not even close to what they can score yet. Not even close,” Bauman said, beaming at the possibilities. “This team can go into the postseason and shock people.”

A special group

It was hard to project how SUU would fare this season, especially since it was split nearly 50-50 between freshmen and seniors (four others were either sophomores or juniors). The coaches worried that it could lead to turbulence in the locker room because of the experience gap — gymnasts that had gone through the grind of a season several times and were nearing graduation and gymnasts with no collegiate experience in competition and balancing gymnastics and school.

The exact opposite happened.

“They’ve come in and the freshmen are respectful and learning and want to do their job just as much as the seniors are, and our seniors are experienced — they’re helping those freshmen learn (from) that experience and they’re behind them 100 percent,” said assistant coach Jamie Wysong. “Everybody is fighting for everyone. It’s a very rare breed, the group that we have today. … You don’t get to coach a team like this every year of your life.”

SUU gymnasts cheer on a teammate during a routine during a meet at BYU on March 13, 2017. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)
SUU gymnasts cheer on a teammate during a routine during a meet at BYU on March 13, 2017. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)

Tyly Bozzuto, a senior on the team, said the upperclassmen saw the potential the freshmen had and the potential the team had to compete. They saw growth from themselves in four years and wanted to aid the youngsters in transitioning to the collegiate level.

The seniors also wanted to make sure the team was in good hands when they left. All of that helped the team mesh before the season began.

“Just seeing how everyone worked together in the summer, even with so many new faces in the gym, that it was really good for us and we were able to learn from that,” she said. “As we progressed into the preseason, we were pushing each other to do better and better on all four events.”

However, it wouldn’t be until January 2017 that anyone would know how the effort in the gym would translate into competition.

While Bauman knew over the summer that his team was going to compete well, it wasn’t until Jan. 20 that the rest of the school could see that something special was brewing in Cedar City.

SUU opened the season with a 196.150 score in a win over Stanford — just a few tenths off the school record. SUU usually found itself scoring 196s during the end of the season.

“You knew right there it was going to be a good year,” Bauman said.

Tearing through record books

SUU broke its school record in the all-around team score on Feb. 6 against Denver, scoring a 196.7. That score bested the previous record of 196.575 set at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Championship meet last year.

That record didn’t last either. Four days later, the team scored a 196.725. On Feb. 26, it scored a 196.6 at Michigan — currently the team’s highest road score ever. Then, finally, on March 3, a 197.025 in a win over North Carolina State on Senior Day.

Records have fallen left and right. The team broke the 197-point barrier for the first time as a team.

SUU freshman gymnast Becky Rozsa salutes the judges after completing a routine as her teammates celebrate in a meet between SUU and BYU at the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse on March 13, 2017. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)
SUU freshman gymnast Becky Rozsa salutes the judges after completing a routine as her teammates celebrate in a meet between SUU and BYU at the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse on March 13, 2017. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)

Other records fell. The team scored its highest score on the uneven bars on March 3 with a 49.3. On Feb. 17, SUU set a school-record 49.550 on floor exercise — a week after scoring a 49.475 in the event (third-best in school history). The Thunderbirds scored a 49.3 on the balance beam on Feb. 6, which tied for fourth-highest in team history.

Even when things seemed to fall apart, the team bounced back. When the team scored a 47.375 on the balance beam at Boise State on Feb. 3, they bounced back just three days later with the 49.3 in the event.

When the Flippin’ ‘Birds lost senior Danielle Ramirez for the season with an injury (a gymnast who along with former gymnast Elise Wheeler held nearly all the individual all-around records at SUU), they still went on to score their highest team all-around score in program history.

“It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday or what happened in your last turn, your focus is on what you’re doing (now) and staying in the moment — being with each other and staying behind each other,” Wysong said. “I think that’s how we’ve been able to go from maybe not our best to pretty good — or maybe our best gymnastics.”

“We are all girls who do not know how to quit,” Webb adds. “If we do mess up, we’re going to let it go,” Webb said. “We’re going to come right back into the gym, work on what we screwed up on and then just go out and hit it.”

Individually, freshman Autumn Jorgensen tied the school record with a 9.95 on the floor exercise. Then, on March 13, Webb became the first gymnast in program history to score a perfect 10 in any event, scoring a 10 on the balance beam at BYU.

SUU senior gymnast Stacie Webb celebrates after sticking the landing on her balance beam routine during a meet at BYU on March 13, 2017. Judges gave Webb a perfect 10 for the routine — the first in SUU's history. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)
SUU senior gymnast Stacie Webb celebrates after sticking the landing on her balance beam routine during a meet at BYU on March 13, 2017. Judges gave Webb a perfect 10 for the routine — the first in SUU's history. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)

SUU became a can’t-miss team that can strike at any moment, which even Bauman learned the hard way. When Webb completed her perfect routine, Bauman was nowhere to be found. After coaching thousands of routines from hundreds of gymnasts in 26 years as the head coach, Bauman missed the first 10 in the program’s history — because he was in the bathroom.

“I didn’t see any of it,” he said. “I just heard our team flipping out. I walked in and I saw a 10 from one of the judges and I’m like ‘whoa, one of the judges gave her a 10.’ And then I saw both of them and I’m like, ‘what?!’ I was so mad that I didn’t see any of it.”

Luckily, Bauman instantly found the humor in it.

“I saw the flush handle of a urinal during that whole routine,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. He then intentionally missed Webb’s beam routine at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Championships later in the week to see if she could duplicate the success. She scored a 9.9 in the event.

The team’s information director eventually handed him a phone with a video and on the indoor track of the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse, Bauman finally watched the routine he was hoping he’d see one day.

“Wow,” he said, as he watched Webb execute the various skills perfectly. The score, he noted, is even more impressive considering it happened on the road at BYU.

With all the successes this season — barriers broken that were once thought unachievable — only one goal stands left unchecked on the list: going to the NCAA Nationals as a team.

Entering 2017, SUU hadn’t scored a 197 as a team and hadn’t scored a 10 individually, and it still hasn't made it that far (Nationals) into a season as a team. With two of those three “nevers” checked off the list, the desire to compete with the 12 best in the country remains on the wish list.

“Us as seniors have been able to say that we’ve been able to accomplish all of the goals that we have wanted in the four years that we were here — mainly in just this year alone,” Bozzuto said. “It’s so satisfying to know we’ve accomplished what we have been working for all four years as seniors."

Webb, who is already the first SUU gymnast to score a 10 for an event, wants that team distinction, too.

“My personal selfish goal is for our team to go down in the SUU Hall of Fame as the 2017 team that went to Nationals,” she said. “That’s what I’m really looking forward to.”

Trying to break brackets — and history

Traveling to West Virginia isn’t a worst-case scenario — but it’s not going to be easy either. The Thunderbirds find themselves competing against two top 7 teams and a region host with just two spots to NCAA Nationals on the line.

“We like it. We’re going in as a top seed, but we’re still an underdog,” Bauman said. “It seems like we’re always an underdog wherever we go. With this particular regional, people don’t give too much of a chance to the outside teams — that third team or anyone else really making it.”

Of the 18 ranked programs, only SUU and Denver (which used to compete in the same gymnastics conference as SUU before moving to the Big 12) aren’t Division I-A universities, as classified by the NCAA. Those are programs that have FBS football — the top generator of revenue for most athletic programs in the country. Thus, SUU is relatively small in many ways compared to the rest of the top 18.


"We’re going in as a top seed, but we’re still an underdog. It seems like we’re always an underdog wherever we go." — SUU head coach Scott Bauman

If there is a saving grace, the Flippin’ ‘Birds have shown they can compete with some of the nation’s best regardless of the size of the program. They defeated No. 9 Denver in a head-to-head meet and competed well at Michigan (a team SUU also beat head-to-head last season), as well as head-to-head wins with Stanford once and North Carolina State twice.

“This is the first time that we’ve been seeded and we’ve set so many records and stuff that we’re making a name for Southern Utah gymnastics. I think even though we are the underdog going into this meet, the judges and the other competitors will have it in their minds that we are a good team and we can compete against these big-name schools,” Bozzuto said.

Michigan is a familiar foe now, but the margin for error is slim. To pull off a major upset means not making mistakes. It’s a daunting task, but Bauman thinks it’s possible.

Anything is possible at regionals because of the element that teams can make those mistakes. The teams with the least mistakes move forward.

“We’re going in there with the mind frame that we’re just going to hit our gymnastics and we’re going to nail the crap out of our gymnastics and that’s how we’re going to be able to do it,” Bauman said. “There’s no other way that we can. We can’t sit there and hope Michigan falls or Alabama falls or any of that stuff. That only thing we control is what we do out there, and we can be good at controlling that.”

Is this going to be the major bracket upset of the gymnastics regionals?

“I think it’s something that we definitely can do,” Bozzuto said, referencing all the other feats SUU has accomplished this season. “Odds are hard to say, but I think that we can definitely be the team to make it to Nationals if we go out there and hit the gymnastics that we know how to do.”

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