The No. 14 Tigers upset the No. 11 Arkansas Razorback by a score of 197.250 to 197.200 at Arkansas on Friday night. This was the second-highest road score ever posted by the Tigers in program history.
“Just really happy with the girls,” said head coach Jeff Graba. “This is an extremely tough environment. We’ve got a bit of a young team, and you get on the road pretty fast and jump into something with a huge crowd and a lot of pressure."
Already surpassing their win total of last season, the Tigers swapped the lead with Arkansas multiple times during the meet. They were trailing by the smallest margin of .025 when heading into the final rotation, where they put up huge scores to give the Tigers the road win.
"I really am proud of how they handled it and accomplished the goals we wanted to accomplish coming in, so all-in-all a really good night," Graba said.
Auburn started the night off on bars, where lead-off gymnast Adeline Sabados had a fall. However, the team hit the rest of their routines to put up a solid rotation score of 49.400. That score also included a 9.950 by Suni Lee in the anchor spot, which was good enough to earn her the event title for the meet.
“So, mistakes along the way, we tell the girls all the time, we’re not going to have a perfect meet where 24 girls do not make mistakes, 24 routines do not make mistakes," Graba said. "We’re not going to have that. It’s how you adapt, it’s how you persevere, it’s how you fight. So the second girl up has to restart the clock when the first girl messes up. And that’s what they did.”
The Tigers next headed to vault, where they put up their lowest, but still solid, rotation score of the meet with a 49.150. According to Graba, the gymnasts were trying to go for sticks and do better than their performaces last week at North Carolina, which led to some of the small mistakes made in the rotation.
Derrian Gobourne and Sophia Groth led the Tigers with matching scores of 9.875 during the vault rotation. However, the Razorbacks put up a massive bars rotation score of 49.550, which gave them the meet lead at the halfway point by .050.
Auburn next headed to the floor, where there were several anticipated routines that were to be performed. The team put up a rotation score of 49.325, with Gobourne posting a team-high 9.925 and Lee making her floor debut with a score of 9.875. The Tigers still trailed Arkansas by .025 heading into the final rotation.
The beam rotation for Auburn brought hits by all gymnasts to lead to a solid final rotation score of 49.375. Gabby McLaughlin bounced back from a 9.775 on bars to lead the Tigers on beam with a score of 9.925 and to a meet win by a margin of .050.
“There’s no feeling like it,” Groth said, who posted a 9.900 in the final beam rotation. “I knew going into beam that it was going to be close and that we needed to do our best. There was no room for error. So, just being able to build and get better every routine was just an amazing feeling and knowing that we were on the road, which makes it even more difficult, I think made it even sweeter.”
Graba mentioned that some of the athletes had even upgraded their routines before this meet, which turned out to be key for the victory.
Graba and Groth both expressed high hopes for this year’s team after such a high score so early in the season. Both feel as if the team has even more room to improve and fully expect more good scores to follow as the season progresses.
The Tigers will face No. 20 Iowa State next week for their first home meet of the season at Auburn Arena on Friday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. CST. The meet will be streamed on SEC Network-plus.
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Emily Porch is a senior from Sylacauga, Alabama. She joined The Plainsman in fall 2021.
Twitter: @emilycporch
