Utah State’s gymnastics team has been in a long rebuilding mode under third-year coach Amy Smith. This just might be the season the rebuilding starts to pay off for the Aggies.

The Aggies return 10 gymnasts from the 2019 squad, which placed fourth at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Championships. Among the returners are juniors Autumn DeHarde and Leighton Varnadore, who were second-team all-MRGC selections.

The Aggies are very young, with the only seniors being Elle Golison and Brittany Jeppesen. Jeppesen could be a bit rusty though since she missed the 2019 season due to injury. In 2018 she competed as a bars specialist, tying for 12th on bars at the NCAA Regional Championships with a 9.85.

The junior class looks to be the strength of the team with Annie Beck, Taylor Dittmar, Mikaela Meyer and Logan Varnadore joining DeHarde and Leighton Varnadore in the experienced group.

The team has seven freshmen, but they have been able to integrate well thanks to the offseason training program.

Thanks in part to the team’s response in that training, Smith has high hopes for the Aggies, who showed a lot of promise in 2019 with some of their biggest scores.

The Aggies averaged 48.885 on bars (third all-time average in school history for a season) 49.035 on floor (fourth all-time), 48.675 on beam (sixth all-time) and 48.73 on vault (ninth all-time).

The Aggies finished 2019 placing fourth at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference Championship behind Boise State, SUU and BYU. It was a good showing, but the Aggies could be vying for a much higher placing in 2020.

Southern Utah

For the gymnasts at Southern Utah, the 2019 season had some big highlights. The Flippin’ Birds beat BYU when it was ranked No. 17, notched the school’s sixth-highest score in history and finished second at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference. But there were also enough injuries that SUU felt it never reached its highest potential in many ways.

SUU finished fourth at its regional meet, ending the season with a respectable 195.35 and thoughts of what could have been.

The season was enough to give coach Scott Bauman encouragement for this year, but also motivation to change some of the training plans, such as keeping the gymnasts on softer surfaces longer than usual.

“I have been doing this for 36 years so I know there is a lot of luck involved to stay healthy,” he said. “You could do all the preventative stuff you want and still have someone break a leg walking down the street. But hopefully keeping the surfaces soft longer than normal will pay off.”

The good news is SUU doesn’t seem behind now that the gymnasts are training on hard surfaces and the team is on track, Bauman said.

“We feel good where we are,” he said. “They worked hard and a lot of them have upgraded their routines this year. With 10 juniors and seniors, we can rely on them, but the sophomore class is dynamic and is going to be fun to watch too.”

Sophomore Karley McClain will get a lot of attention as the MRGC Freshman of the Year, but Autumn Jorgensen, but sisters Megan and Madison McBride, Hannah Nipp and Molly Jozwiakowski are also expected to be regular contributors. Overall though, Bauman is excited about the team’s depth and how it might translate to a good season.

“Goofy little things held us back last year,” he said. “But we’re looking great now and have had great competition every day in practice. It should be a fun team to coach this year.”