Posted by RM! on 3/23/2009, 9:17 am
Message modified by board administrator 3/23/2009, 10:17 am
I had quite the anticipation for this one. Realistically we had some amazing opportunity to show the Pac-10 what the Beavers were all about. Going into this meet the Beavers were ranked #3 but could take the Championship with four solid events. Individually, Mandi and Jami had great chances of becoming our first Pac-10 All Around winner since Chari won the title back in 1994!! Mandi and Jami both could win vault, Leslie was my bet on bars, Jami was looking to repeat as Pac-10 champion on beam, though really any of the six of the Beaver Beam team could take the title with a hit beam set! And on Floor.. I was looking at Mandi to win this one... though Jami and Jerome have shown to be huge crowd pleasing routines.
I got into Palo Alto after an exhausting day of work and an airplane ride to Oakland and a car ride to the hotel. I went to sleep early hoping to get a good nights rest for an amazing afternoon! Got up, had breakfast and met an old college friend who joined me and other Boosters for a pre-meet gathering at Chilis. Got to meet Becky’s and LA’s families for the first time and also re-visited with Jami’s and Jen’s. Also joining us was 2003 Pac-10 Floor Exercise Champion Chrissy Lamun and her family. How awesome that after three years Chrissy and her family are still devoted Beaver fans!! Very cool. And of course our Gymnastics fixture, #1 Beaver Booster Richard was there 
Got to the meet about 45 minutes before the start of the meet to join the sea of orange that had arrived early to save seats and bring the Beaver Believers together. What a great crowd of family, boosters, fans and friends of all ages that came out to support the Beavers in the 2009 Pac-10 Championships!! The team was looking confident and fabulous in their new leos 
Rotation One --- Balance Beam – Oregon State was on the Beam. Stanford was on Vault and UCLA was on the bye. Forgive me but I only focused on these three teams who I believe were the teams that were in the hunt for that Pac-10 Championship. As always, I felt this feeling of nervousness... anticipating each routine, each skill down to the dismount. And for us to start on beam – just more pressure to have at least five hit sets!! Brooke Barclay started the Beavers off on Balance Beam --- with four judges – which I absolutely LOVE! It would give every a more fair equal playing ground.. (If you can call anything equal in gymnastics!!) First major skill – and a first major break for the Beavers.. Huge wobble on her back handspring two foot layout – but great save for Brooke!! The rest of the routine on the beam was perfection. Awesome sheep jump, great front layout but then a big step forward on her full dismount. Not what we were looking for, but no fall and we started the night out with a 9.625. Next up, Jen Kesler did a great job to bring us back with a solid set. Very nice, hit every skill, awesome flip flop to two layout combo and just one step back on her 1 ˝ twisting dismount. Very nice and the Beavers were back in it. Holding my breath.. OK, can we breathe now? Two down.. Next up... Mandi – who was my pick to win the all-around title so I was closely watching her every move... hoping that I was looking at the Pac-10 Champion.. Boy, Mandi does not disappoint! She is amazing! Awesome front to back swing-down. Incredible leaps on her leap series – totally 180% -- just awesome... Then she just nailed the 1 ˝ running dismount. What a beauty! Awesome! Just nailed this routine! One Down Three More to go.. If she can hit three more like that... unbeatable! Score UP – Just a 9.850... though I did see that one judge threw out a 9.9. LA followed Mandi... solid set but had a wobble on her punch front to go 9.8. Nailed her full dismount to keep the Beavers in the hunt. Leslie Mak has just been hitting so well on beam so it was very hard to see her wobble throughout this beam set. Huge bobble after her illusion and with such a difficult set the judges still gave Leslie a 9.65. Anchoring the beam team and looking to defend her Pac-10 title, the current beam pac-10 champion mounted looking ever so confident. She was looking so great, so fluid, Jami looked like she was on – but she was off on her layout and came off the beam! 
Ouch! Jami finished her set and ended her set with that amazing double full dismount off the side. This was the dismount I was expecting to see all season and she finally did it post season and it was gorgeous!! Too bad for that fall she was looking to defend that title! Overall on beam, the Beavers had to count two 9.6 scores and just a 48.725 rotation total. If we were to be Pac-10 champions, this was not the score we were going to need. At this point... it could have gone either way... you could give up or fight back... and it was obvious that the Beavers were not ready to give it up yet... they went to bye to re-group for floor.
Elsewhere in rotation one -- Stanford was hitting their vaults, I didn’t see any perfect sticks but did see some 9.925 scores thrown out every so often so Stanford was out there leading the Pac after rotation one with a solid 49.350. Carly Janiga who was Mandi’s main competition for the all-around crown hit a 9.875 and was up .025 after rotation one. UW was solid on bars with a 48.450 and ASU started with issues and a 48.100 on the floor. Of course I had to be looking at individual scores and I could see the top vault score was from Stanford 9.925, and Mandi’s was top beam score with a 9.850. Is it bad of me that I didn’t even consider the bars and floor scores at this point?! I did see that Nicole Harris had a bad floor score so I didn’t really look at them over there.
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