Tide vaults past Arkansas with season-high score

TUSCALOOSA | The fourth-ranked University of Alabama gymnastics team landed on its feet a week after falling to top-ranked Georgia, literally vaulting its way back into championship-contending form.

Alabama turned in its best set on vault since the middle of last season on the way to a season-high score of 196.775 in Friday night’s victory over No. 10 Arkansas in front of a sold-out crowd at Coleman Coliseum.

The Lady ’Backs also posted a season-best score, 195.95, but never threatened the Crimson Tide in front of a house packed with fans clad in pink in keeping with the meet’s breast cancer awareness theme.

Alabama performed with precision on vault and kept its feet planted rather firmly on the landing pad, earning solid scores on an event that proved troublesome in last year’s disappointing ninth-place finish at the NCAA Championships.

The standout vault rotation affirmed what Georgia’s head coach, Suzanne Yoculan, had observed a week before when she said that Alabama had vaulted better than any team she had seen all season despite some harsh scoring from the meet’s judges. Going into the weekend, only four teams in the country had posted a higher score than the 49.4 Alabama achieved against the ’Gym Backs.

“I think more than anything we vaulted pretty much the same this week as last week but the scores were better and it really got the crowd into it,” Alabama coach Sarah Patterson said.

Unlike the end of last season, when Alabama rarely came close to sticking a vault landing, the Tide’s vaulters were dagger-sharp against Arkansas. Casey Overton (9.875) had the tiniest of hops, Ricki Lebegern (9.9) barely slid her feet a few inches and Kayla Hoffman (9.95) might have scored a perfect 10 had she been able to avoid turning her left foot slightly after hitting the mat.

“Every 10th [of a point] you can get is important,” Lebegern said, “and a lot of it is our landings.”

Said Hoffman, “I think we’ve improved a lot. It shows how hard we’ve been working in practice.”

Alabama led by close to a point after the opening rotation with its high vault score contrasting with Arkansas’ 48.525 on the uneven parallel bars. The Tide went 49.45 on the bars, with senior Terin Humphrey returning to the lineup after missing two of Alabama’s last three meets to match her season high with a 9.9. Kassi Price followed with a 9.95.

Humphrey sat out the Georgia meet due to illness and lingering back soreness. She warmed up on balance beam Friday but didn’t make the final lineup on that event.

“I think she still needs another week or two,” Patterson said.

The ’Gym Backs, meanwhile, also rocked the vault, putting up the second-highest score in the program’s history on the event at 49.225, led by Casey Jo Magee and Michelle Stout with twin scores of 9.875.

The beam proved to be a downturn for Alabama, which led by a full point at the meet’s halfway point with a midway score of 98.75. Two falls by Hoffman forced the Tide to count Amanda Montgomery’s 9.5, and no UA gymnast scored better than Lebegern’s 9.875 on the way to a team tally of 48.85. With Arkansas going 49.05 on the floor exercise, Alabama was up by 8/10ths going into the final rotation.

The Tide had its ups and downs on the floor exercise, with Hoffman bouncing back from her beam problems to score 9.9 and Price putting on a dazzling show to post a 9.875, but Kaitlin White taking a deduction for a fall and an out-of-bounds penalty and Morgan Dennis coming up short on her final tumbling pass to stumble to a 9.725.

The high team score was achieved despite the beam and floor mishaps because of nine scores higher than 9.85. Those high marks came in part due to the addition of more difficult skills into several routines.

“I’m very proud of our team coming back and getting on the winning track,” Patterson said. “It’s kind of like you take two steps forward and one step back. We had a higher score tonight. We’re not a team that can throw [tougher skills] out there on the last night. We have to put it in now.”

The Alabama-Arkansas meet will be televised Feb. 17 at 1:30 p.m. on ESPN2.

Alabama will have an open date next weekend before visiting LSU on Friday, Feb. 22. The Tide will return home to host Florida on Feb. 29.

Alabama's individual scores:

Vault

Brittany Magee 9.825

Kaitlin White 9.8

Casey Overton 9.875

Ricki Lebegern 9.9

Kayla Hoffman 9.95

Morgan Dennis 9.85

Uneven Bars

Morgan Dennis 9.775

Kaitlin White 9.85

Ricki Lebegern 9.375

Kayla Hoffman 9.875

Terin Humphrey 9.9

Kassi Price 9.95

Balance Beam

Casey Overton 9.825

Amanda Montgomery 9.5

Ricki Lebegern 9.875

Kayla Hoffman 8.8

Kassi Price 9.8

Morgan Dennis 9.85

Floor Exercise

Ricki Lebegern 9.825

Casey Overton 9.85

Kaitlin White 9.15

Kassi Price 9.875

Kayla Hoffman 9.9

Morgan Dennis 9.725