Cliff Kirkpatrick

Neither Oregon State football player Jordan Bishop or Obum Gwacham qualified for the NCAA indoor track championships in the high jump.

It took 7 feet, 2.5 inches to qualify, OSU track coach Kelly Sullivan said. Both provisionally qualified. Gwacham reached 7-1 and Bishop reached 7-0.5.

The moonlighting football players take a break for spring practice, and will compete at the end of the outdoor season.

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I caught up with Oregon State football coach Mike Riley on Monday about the latest on the roster. Check out the story in Tuesday’s GT. Comment on the blog if wish.

The Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis and the Beavers will conduct the fifth annual free OSU Youth Football Clinic to enable interested young people to learn football from some of the Beavers.

Boys and girls in grades three through eight are eligible. The event is planned from 10 a.m.-noon on Saturday in the Truax Indoor Center. Riley, his coaching staff and players will be there to teach football skills and running drills.

Registration is not required, but a $5 donation to help support the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis athletic scholarship fund is suggested. All participants should wear warm indoor/outdoor clothes and football or gym shoes. Approximately 350 youth from all around the Willamette Valley participate in the event every year.

On the wrestling front, here’s the lastest on the Beavers as they prepare for the NCAA tournament. The brackets come out Wednesday with the at-large entrants.

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The No. 8-ranked Oregon State gymnastics team hopes Friday’s rough outing at Louisiana State serves as the final wake-up call so the Beavers finish the season strong. It has been a tough stretch of three straight road meets as they went 1-2.

“There were some great performances, but unfortunately Makayla (Stambaugh) had an off day and Jen (Kesler) had an off day on beam, and Whitney (Watson) started us off with a fall,” coach Tanya Chaplin said Monday. “With all those falls and deductions, that took us out of the running. Without those it would have been a very close meet.”

A trip to No. 9 Utah on Friday against the Utes, No. 18 Penn State and No. 21 Southern Utah is next. The final home meet is against No. 15 Kentucky on March 19.

“Hopefully, we’ll come back and rebound from this,” Chaplin said. “Our focus is to do a few more things and change how a few of them are thinking going into a meet, especially the freshmen to help them close to the postseason.”

What’s been going on with them?

“Sometimes I think they take on too much of the-score-counts-for-everything (mentality) instead of relaxing and staying focused,” Chaplin said. “They think about the uncontrollables.”

What happened with Stambaugh falling? Is she still having issues with the ankle?

“She’s good,” Chaplin said. “We talked a lot after the meet. We have a good plan moving forward with her.”

Is she hitting that wall you talked about that all freshmen do, no matter how good they are?

“She may have a little bit,” Chaplin said. “You can see her changing, too, a little bit, especially the last month. You just don’t know what to expect your first year. It’s a much longer season than club season. How to balance that out, how to keep your emotions going week after week to get up for a competition like that is very different from what club athletes go through. It’s managing the emotion, school and everything else.”

Kelsi Blalock (ankle) and Leilani Alferos (bicycle accident) remain out. Blalock will miss her sixth meet and Alferos is out for her third.

“They are still plugging away,” Chaplin said. “They are getting better but the are not ready to come back, yet.”

That means OSU only has 10 active gymnastics again, but others are healing. Leslie Mak (elbow) is ready to come back on the bars if needed. Laura-Ann Chong (back) is coming back on the floor.

And check out some more video from the LSU meet. The top one is the bars routine. The bottom the beam.

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