It’s definitely not how you want your senior night to start. Arizona gymnastics star Emma Strom hurt her ankle in warmups and was out for the final home meet of her college career. Others needed to step in and help lift the team. Enter freshman Delaney Mead.
“She was the gymnast of the meet,” said Arizona head coach John Court.
Mead didn’t have much time to get used to the idea of performing. She certainly didn’t get a lot of time to adapt to the idea of being the anchor on floor where Strom regularly puts up scores of 9.900 or better.
“I found out right after we walked in, like, did march in,” Mead said. “So yeah, it was a pretty cool experience, though, to be able to anchor floor and have my teammate’s back when she needed me to.”
Mead said she knows she’s the alternate, so she approaches a meet as if she’s going to compete every time. This time it turned out that she had to. She came through with a 9.850 to end the meet.
The team fought through the difficulty to finish second in the quad meet. Ohio State won with a score of 196.650, followed by Arizona with a 196.300. Texas Woman’s came in third with a 194.325, and Southeast Missouri scored 194.225.
“We knew we kind of wanted to hit a certain mark today,” Court said. “We did that. And hopefully there’s some good math, because we’re going week by week with our goals.”
Things started out shaky for Arizona. Redshirt senior Liz LaRusso got the team started with a solid 9.775 and Ainsley Greever earned a 9.850, but the rest of the lineup did not perform as well as they would have liked. It was the only event on which the GymCats did not earn a 49 or better.
“Five 9.8s on bars, six on floor, five on beam—that’s us doing Arizona gymnastics,” Court said.
LaRusso is wrapping up her fifth year with Arizona gymnastics as she works on a master’s degree in speech language pathology. In addition to her 9.775 on vault, her 9.850 on floor tied Mead and Sophie Derr for the team high on the event.
It was the second senior night for LaRusso, but this time it was for real. She’ll be working in her field back in her hometown of Las Vegas next year.
“Last year I kind of had a feeling I was coming back, but this year, it’s just all the emotions, and I’m grateful beyond words for everything this program has given me,” LaRusso said.
She’s been splitting her time between clinical work and training this season.
“I feel like I’m kind of working two jobs and a double life,” LaRusso said. “I’m like a gymnast in the morning and then a speech therapist at night. No, but it’s really fun, and the coaches and my professors have been really accommodating, and it’s just so fulfilling to work with patients and see them grow.”
That double life isn’t quite over, though. Arizona will go to the Big 12 Championships in Utah next week. Two weeks after that, the GymCats should be in NCAA Regionals.
The 36 teams with the highest NQS qualify for regionals and Arizona was sitting at No. 29 before their final regular season meet. It would be ideal if they could climb at least one spot and get out of the “play-in” meets that include the last eight teams in the field.
Right now, they are just waiting to see where their final regular season NQS places them in the Big 12 hierarchy. With Iowa State cancelling its season and its program, there will only be six teams competing at the Maverik Center. Arizona went into the week with the No. 4 NQS in the league, which would have put them in the late session of the conference championships. Now, it’s up in the air.
“Hopefully, Monday morning the right phone call comes,” Court says.
When they get to the conference meet, they will likely still be without Strom. Court hopes she’s back for regionals in three weeks, but there’s no way to know right now.
They will lean on upperclassmen like LaRusso, Gianna Lenczner, Abigayle Martin, and Sophie Derr, but the younger gymnasts will have plenty of opportunities to fill the void. Mead showed that even those who haven’t had big roles this year can step in and have major impacts on the team’s success.
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