Sooner Women's Gymnastics set for Super 16 Meet in Vegas - Jan 5

[OUBeliever56A]

The 2024 Oklahoma Sooners Women's Gymnastics Team, the defending Back-to-Back National Champions from 2023 and 2022, will travel to Las Vegas for the Friday night meet at the Orleans Arena on Jan 5th and 6th. Oklahoma, the #1 ranked preseason team, takes the floor in the second session at 9 PM CST against No. 6 Michigan, No. 9 Kentucky and No. 11 Michigan State. The session will be available via a YouTube feed in the article below. Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the meet.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/4/ ... ampionship

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
The new year also means the introduction of a quartet of new athletes. Head coach K.J. Kindler signed three freshman and added a graduate transfer in the offseason to bring new depth and experience to Oklahoma.

• Fifth-year senior Soraya Hawthorne has joined the Sooners after an impressive four-year career at Georgia. Hawthorne was a standout competitor on vault, beam and floor for the GymDogs and will bring even more depth to an already stacked vault lineup.

Aspen Lenczner, Hannah Scheible and Keira Wells make up the 2024 freshman class.

• Lenczner competed in the All-Star West (previously IES Wildcard) division at the 2023 Women's Development Program National Championships, finishing fourth in the all-around and seventh on beam.

• Scheible brings a wealth of national experience. At the 2022 Women's Development Program National Championships, she earned gold on beam, silver in the all-around and bronze on vault. Scheible also competed at the prestigious Nastia Liukin Cup where she finished 10th on floor in the senior division.

• Bringing the power on vault, Wells has been a level 10 gymnast since 2017. A four-time level 10 national qualifier (2018, '19, '21, '22), Wells is a three-time consecutive national vault champion (2019, '21, '22). In 2021, she won vault with a career-high perfect 10 at the Region 3 Level 10Regional Championships.

WE TOO DEEP
The Sooners return 13 gymnasts from the 2023 squad that secured the programs sixth national title in fifth-year senior Ragan Smith; seniors Audrey Davis, Bell Johnson, Katherine LeVasseur, Sheridan Ramsey and Meilin Sullivan; juniors Jordan Bowers, Danae Fletcher, Caitin Kirkpatrick, Danielle Sievers and Madison Snook; and sophomores Ava Siegfeldt and Faith Torrez.

The 2024 Oklahoma squad returns 21 routines and welcomes four incredible newcomers for the season. Under head coach K.J. Kindler, OU is 16-3 all-time in season openers. The Sooners have not lost a season opener since 2016.

Coach K.J. Kindler is doing a tremendous job for the University of Oklahoma and for the Women's Gymnastics Team of Oklahoma as she has built the Sooners into the #1 program in the country and has won 6 National Championships since 2014 with the Sooners.

Good luck to the team in their first meet of the 2024 season. I think another 198+ score could be in the cards for the powerful, loaded Sooners tomorrow night.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

Talkative is one way to describe the commentators last night. But they did show the action and used a split screen nicely. Gymnastic meets are so much easier to watch in person, at least to watch the Sooner performers. But I did enjoy the broadcast and when I finally figured out the Live Stats feed. The final results of the four teams performing last night was:

1st - Oklahoma 197.850 2nd - Kentucky 196.775 3rd - Michigan State 196.300 4th - Michigan 195.875

OU held the #1 ranking coming into the meet, with Kentucky ranked #9, Michigan State #11 and Michigan #6.

The 197.850 team score was only a slim 0.150 margin away from that magic 198.000 score the Sooners seem to reach for each time they go out. Their event scores were:

Vault - 49.350
Bars - 49.625
Beam - 49.475
Floor - 49.400

The Sooners held the best score in each event last night. Kentucky was tied for 2nd in the Vault with Michigan. Kentucky was 2nd in the Beam and Vault also. Michigan State was 2nd in the Bars.

Three Sooners made their debut last night. Hannah Scheible, freshman, was 2nd up on the Vault on the opening event for the Sooners. She picked up a 9.900 in her first appearence and tied for the team lead on the vault. Keira Well, another freshman, was 2nd up on the Bars and posted a 9.825 and shared the 5th best score on the device. Wells also performed in the Vault and posted a 9.850 for the Sooners that was 'counted' in the team score. Soraya Hawthorne, transfer 5th year senior from Georgia, performed exhibition routines on the Vault and the Floor. We were able to see her Floor routine and she looked like she was ready to perform if needed.

Here were the event scores for the Sooners:

Vault: - T1st - J. Bowers 9.900, H. Scheible 9.900, T3rd - A. Davis 9.850, K. Wells 9.850, F Torrez 9.850, 6th - K. Levasseur 9.800, Exhibition - S. Hawthorne
Bars - T1st - F. Torrez 9.950, R. Smith 9.950, 3rd - K. Levasseur 9.925, T4rd - D. Fletcher 9.900, A. Davis 9.900, J. Bowers 9.900, Exhibition - D. Sievers
Beam - T1st - F. Torrez 9.950, R. Smith 9.950, T3rd - A. Davis 9.875, J. Bowers 9.875, T5th - K. Wells 9.825, K. Levasseur 9.825, Exhibition - M. Sullivan
Floor - 1st - J. Bowers 9.925, T2nd - A. Davis 9.875, D. Fletcher 9.875, F. Torrez 9875, 5th - K. Levasseur 9.850, 6th - R. Smith 9.750 - Exhibition - S. Hawthorne
All-Around - 1st - F. Torrez 39.625, 2nd - J. Bowers 39.600, 3rd - A. Davis 39.500 4th - K. Levasseur 39.400
R. Smith competed on three events, K. Wells and D. Fletcher on 2 and H. Scheible on 1 for the Sooners. The Exhibition routines were by four other Sooners in S. Hawthorne, D. Sievers and M. Sullivan.

Faith Torrez tied for the All-Around title for the evening group with her career high of 39.625.

Ragan Smith and Faith Torrez tied for the Beam title for the evening group with their 9.950.

Jordan Bowers claimed the Floor title in the evening group with her 9.925.

It was a great opening performance by the Sooner Women's Gymnastics team on Friday night. They look very ready for the season, very ready. In a brief post-meet interview with Coach KJ Kindler, the Sooner Coach seemed to be very happy with the teams performance. With the depth of the Sooners, the competition must be tremendous in the gym for the team.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the event.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/6/ ... son-opener

The Sooners will travel to West Valley City, Utah, for the most anticipated matchup of the season on Jan. 13 at the inaugural Sprouts Farmer's Market Collegiate Quad. The meet will feature four top-five teams including No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 3 LSU, No. 4 Utah and No. 5 UCLA all competing on ABC at 3 p.m. CT from inside the Maverik Center.

Here is a toast to the Women for their opening meet performance and to having a great week in practice before the big meet in Utah. The meet next Saturday Jan 13th, afternoon will be broadcast on ABC to a national audience in an afternoon broadcast at 3 PM. Put that on your calendars and do not forget to watch.

Boomer Sooner!

[TN Sooner]

“Talkative is one way to describe the commentators last night.”

56 with the understatement of the year!

My goodness they were tough to listen to - lots of “oohs and aah’s” that were impossible to match to the action on screen. No real effort to help keep up with the scoring. No recap of event totals by event. The man was a club coach in Minnesota - Sunni Lee is his claim to fame. The lady was retired LSU coach. Great example of the value of a play-by-play announcer coupled with an analyst. 2 analysts, without a P-B-P, is a jumbled mess, talking over each other, often saying exactly the same thing.

I liked the individual score bug that rotated between the name of the prior gymnast and the status of their score, the score posted (including by each judge), along with the upcoming/current gymnast and (if you looked close enough) the start value of their routine.

The team total page was fixed by the order of the seeding - never changed to reflect the actual standings. You had to really look closely to figure out the team standings. After OU’s second event (bars), you knew we were going to win if we stayed on our feet, but the jockeying for 2,3 and 4 positions would have been easier to follow with an adjusting leaderboard.

[SwampSooner]

I watched most of the event on my cell phone. I don't recommend this method, especially if they are televising using Split screen. The screen was already too small, showing two feeds made it next to impossible to tell the women apart,

I agree with you about the commentators. With the split screen, it was hard to tell who the commentators were discussing.

The woman commentator did have one really great line. When the Sooners started separating from the rest of the field, she said "that's just Oklahoma being Oklahoma".

[TN Sooner]

The other session of the Super 16 that included high profile, ranked teams, was last night. Results (pre-season ranking):

Alabama (8) 197.125
Cal (7) 196.850
Auburn (17) 196.600
UCLA (5) 196.550

The Sooners 197.850 looks pretty nice compared to these scores.

[AustinTXSooner]

I watched it live and I thought they did a pretty good job of showing all of the routines. I think they missed one of our vaults, but maybe that was just me.

The judging on the floor was tough. Only two scores all night at 9.9 and above. Bowers won the event at 9.925.

The night was filled with a tremendous number of clean routines. I think we stuck almost every landing on bars and beam. One of the freshmen does a vault that isn't a Yurchenko. Not sure that I'd seen that one before.

An outstanding meet for the first one of the year.