Red Rocks Prepared For Top-3 Showdown With No. 2 Oklahoma
It may be a year late but we are finally going to get to see Utah and Oklahoma meet in gymnastics.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic prematurely ended the college gymnastics season last year, there was a lot of legitimate hype surrounding the Utah gymnastics program.
For the first time since 1995 when the Red Rocks won their last national title, there was a lot of talk that the 2019-20 squad could be the team that would end Utah's long time draught of not being the best in college.
Both Utah and Oklahoma were ranked in the top-5 when last season ended, undefeated teams that were set for a collision course at the national championships. Unfortunately that assumption never came to reality and questions will always remain.
While Utah may not be able to give answers regarding how last season would've ended, there is even more hype surrounding the team this season. The Utes will have an opportunity to justify that early season hype when it faces No. 2 Oklahoma in a battle of top-3 teams on Sunday in Norman, Oklahoma.
"Well, scheduling is a little bit of an art, and it's something that we had been working on for years," Utah head coach Tom Farden said. "We wanted to embrace this challenge to see how we stack up against Oklahoma, which is a perennial national championship contender. And we feel that for our program to take another step in into realizing the biggest dreams and goals, it's important for us to see out-of-conference foes that are at that highest level."
Facing a team as talented as Oklahoma was a decision made by Farden because it serves as a phenomenal measuring stick when it comes to figuring out how good you truly are. The Sooners will return the favor and travel to Salt Lake City in 2022.
The decision to face Oklahoma is one that the Red Rocks have embraced as a team, believing that facing a quality opponent can only benefit them down the road. Especially if that road leads to the national championships.
"Tom is very strategic in picking who we compete against, especially before going to Pac-12, because we've never come face to face with OU before nationals," sophomore Maile O'Keefe said. "So he was like, 'We need to do this, we need to go face to face with them; it'll give us a starting point to know where we are against a high-caliber team like that, that wins and wins and wins.'
"So I think it'll be really good for us to come face to face with them before postseason because then we'll be more comfortable and we will know what to expect, know what to do, and know how to handle ourselves."
Utah Gymnastics — Courtesy of Utah Athletics
For Sydney Soloski, one of three seniors on the roster, the opportunity to face a team like Oklahoma, especially in Norman, is a special one. It will also help the Utes be more prepared mentally and emotionally when it comes to Pac-12 competition where the schedule is always full of difficult opponents.
"I'm super excited because in my four years here, the only time that we've seen them is at the National Championships, and that's when the stakes are really high," Soloski said. "I think we're going into it just really excited to get to compete against a top, top team in the regular season and not when we get to nationals being like, 'Oh my gosh — like, that's our competitor,' versus getting to do it in the regular season.
"If we see them again, we're not going to have that same feeling the first time against them," she added. "But it'll be exciting; they're definitely a top-ranked team, but so are we. I think that our mentality going in is we're just as good if not better."
Sydney Soloski — Courtesy of Utah Athletics
Much like Utah, Oklahoma opened the season with a victory over a nationally-ranked program, taking down Arizona State with relative ease by a score of 197.450-194.725. The Sooners total was the second highest of any program in the nation after No. 1 Florida finished with a score of 197.500.
Meanwhile, Utah won the second annual 'Best of Utah' event with a score of 196.900. No. 17 BYU came in second with 195.700 points, followed by No. 23 Southern Utah at 194.325 and Utah State at 194.100. Anything more than a full-point victory can be considered a blowout in the gymnastics community.
The Utes know that any score below 197.000 will have virtually no shot of beating top teams like Florida and Oklahoma. But they were able to get their season-opening nerves out of the way and now know their area of needs that need to be addressed.
"Well, we've got to tighten some things up on bars. I know bars were our first event at Best of Utah, and there was just a lot of fundamental things that were skipped," Farden said. "Maybe because they were a little anxious, maybe because they just had to get that first event at the first meet under their belt. ... But that's definitely an area where we can pick up several tenths. And then vault, we're going to continue to look at increasing the difficulty over there. We're going to challenge our athletes to meet us halfway and get that done this weekend."
While it's most likely that the number of Red Rocks fans in attendance will be low, they will still be able to watch from home. The match will be nationally broadcast on ESPN2 and air at 3 p.m. MT.
"The beauty of gymnastics is regardless of your opponent, your team is the same," Soloski said. "We don't have to watch film and see what their team does versus ours. So I think we're just going to go in every week knowing what our job is, and then regardless of where we're at, who we're against, if we're home or away. ... It's the same thing. Our gymnastics doesn't change based upon that. Definitely difficult not knowing, but we're just gonna go week-by-week. We've trained super hard in the last few months so we don't want to regret anything, even though it's kind of uncertain."
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