Air Force at Centenary

Recap 

The Big Storyline: Both teams survived counting mistakes on bars to increase their teams scores from the last competition. Led by a superb performance from Genevieve Sabado, the Falcons were able to eclipse the 192 mark this week. 

Implications: Although Air Force upped its team total this week, it will slide back a couple spots in the USAG standings after SEMO and Lindenwood’s incredible performances on Friday. The Falcons will need to find a bar lineup that can hit when it counts to stay in the top half of the USAG as the season ramps up. Sabado is the real deal with the perfect combination of grace and power. She will be an integral part of Air Force’s success this season. The Falcons are missing the steady Yurchenko tuck full from Daija Stevenson right now. Hopefully, she can get healthy enough to be added back in the vault lineup. Currently the team is competing three Yurchenko layouts. That’s not going to cut it long term when the competition is scoring 195-plus. Briona Carswell was pulled from the beam lineup after a bad fall in warmup. That’s another big score that could help the Falcons to keep improving. Centenary took one step forward and a couple steps back this week. Plagued by falls on bars and missed beam connections, the Ladies never quite got in their groove. However, floor was much improved this week with more room to grow. Xian Baumgartner’s routine is bound to be a showstopper come later in the season. Centenary will look to put that 45.075 bar performance behind it in the coming weeks and return to the land of six-for-six hit routines. 

Records: Sabado increased her all-around career high by nearly four tenths complete with three event victories. 

Controversies: The bar judges were having difficulties, so both teams had to wait for multiple minutes between each routine. The delay was so long that the first rotation was not competed in alternating order as vault pressed on.