Cliff Kirkpatrick

Laura-Ann Chong on the bars in a home meet.
The Oregon State gymnastics team dropped to No. 7 in the country after defeating California on Sunday with a score of 196.375. The season average score, which rankings are based, is 196.010.

The funny thing about the drop was that was the first meet of the season the Beavers didn’t count a fall.

Oklahoma (196.435) is No. 1 with Alabama (196.405), Arkansas (196.120), Utah (196.060), UCLA (196.042) and Florida (196.020) right behind the Sooners.

Mandi Rodriguez is ranked No. 12 in the all-around (39.260) and Makayla Stambaugh is tied for 16th (39.200).

Rodriguez and Becky Colvin are tied for eighth on the vault (9.875), Laura-Ann Chong is tied for 14th on the beam (9.830), Melanie Jones is fourth on the floor (9.900) after one competition with Rodriguez tied for seventh (9.890) and Stambaugh tied for ninth (9.885).

Leslie Mak is No. 1 on the uneven bars (9.925), but she has only competed in the first event of the season due to her elbow injury.

The Beavers scored a 49.475 on the floor. That was the third highest score in the country this season. Oklahoma had a 49.600 and Stanford had a 49.575.

Another injury
Freshman Kelsi Blalock was hurt during warm-ups Sunday. She injured her left ankle on a vault. Her status will be determined later in the week.

Jones took her place on the vault and floor. She scored a 9.675 on the vault and had the stellar floor routine.

“There were a lot of positives (in the meet); the floor team was spectacular,” coach Tanya Chaplin said. “They did a great job of focusing in after Kelsi got hurt and got the job done. There are still some areas to clean up and we’ll be back in the gym this week to work on those things.”

The schedule
It’s an odd week coming off a road Sunday meet. The Beavers will only have one hard practice Tuesday with today and Wednesday being off days.

They face off with Pacific-10 Conference rival No. 18 Arizona at 7 p.m. on Friday. After that, there’s only one more home meet March 19 against Kentucky.

There are four straight road meets after the Arizona contest at UCLA, Arizona State, LSU and Utah.

Kelsi Blalock warming up at home meet.

To see more photos from throughout the season, check out the GT’s photo gallery here.

Tweet This Post 

A national holiday in sports will be celebrated Sunday for the Super Bowl. Former Beavers OL Kyle DeVan is the starting RG for the Indianapolis Colts. If you haven’t read his remarkable story, yet, check it out here.

The gymnastics team competes at California at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Here’s the meet preview. It should be an easy win for the Beavers. They return home Friday night against Arizona.

Check out this Q&A with gymnastics phonem Makayla Stambaugh with the Pac-10 here. Does anyone else think her answer to who she would like to be for a day strange? Think about it.

The No. 20-ranked wrestling team continued its stellar season with a win over Fullerton on Friday, and another one over No. 16 Cal Poly on Saturday.

There are two more road duals next week at Boise State and Oklahoma to end the regular season. Then it’s on to the Pac-10s and NCAA meet.

The men’s golf team had a nice holiday weekend in Hawaii to kick off the season, but only finished 12th in the tournament.

And since it is the Super Bowl day, here are two my favorite halftime shows with Kiss below and Aerosmith and Britney on top. I nearly picked the Janet Jackson incident, but I couldn’t take that much of Justin Timberlake. Britney counteracted him with Aerosmith.

OK, here are a few more since I was looking around. This one was an important and serious one, back when the world needed the U.S. to get back on its feet to protect them.

One more classic to get you in the festive mood.

Tweet This Post 

The late pickup Oregon State football coach Mike Riley referenced Wednesday on signing day came through with RB Terron Ward.

He’s a 5-foot-7, 185-pounder from De La Salle High in Concord, Calif. Ward accepted a scholarship and a greyshirt opportunity, which means he’ll join the Beavers in January, according to Rivals.com.

Ward is an all-purpose back who runs the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds. Rivals ranks him as a three-star athlete and the No. 23 prospect at his position in the country.

The Beavers didn’t sign him right away because of an abundance of ball carriers, including one signed for the coming season, and they are at the scholarship limit.

Greyshirting pushes Ward back a year and spreads out the RBs in difference classes. Ward didn’t receive any offers due to his size. He’s the brother of former Oregon CB TJ Ward.

Tweet This Post