Cliff Kirkpatrick

Three Oregon State senior gymnasts perform for the last time in Gill Coliseum on Friday against Kentucky. Here’s a link to a story that features them that ran in Tuesday’s GT.

While this is the end of college gymnastics for them, it’s not the end of their involvement in the sport.

Laura-Ann Chong plans to go to graduate school for physical therapy, but leaves working with the Canadian national team open. Her old coach is trying to convince her to come back and do a bars routine.

“I don’t think I’ll have time do go to school and train, but you never know,” Chong said.

Mandi Rodriguez decided to change her career path this year. She studied to go into nursing, but now wants to stay in gymnastics.

“I had a realization that I wouldn’t be happy doing that,” she said of the medical field. “Gymnastics is where my heart is. It’s something I’ve always known. I’m a gym rat. I’d be happy working with female athletes working in sports administration or being a gymnastics coach.”

Whitney Watson may coach. Her father owns the club she trained at as a child, so she may help there. But there are other big plans.

“I am a graphic design major,” Watson said. “I’m designing a gymnastics line for Nike. They don’t make leotards like Adidas does. I hope to get the gymnastics line off the ground for them. So, gymnastics is definitely in my future.”

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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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The Oregon State gymnastics team dropped two spots to No. 8 in the country after the loss at LSU on Friday. The Beavers have an RQS of 196.355.

Alabama is No. 1 (197.155) followed by Oklahoma (196.920), UCLA (196.900), Florida (196.685), Georgia (196.615), Stanford (196.450) and Arkansas (196.375).

The Beavers are No. 4 on the floor (49.265), No. 7 on the beam (49.050), No. 7 on the bars (49.160) and No. 11 on vault (49.165).

Mandi Rodriguez is tied for No. 11 in the all-around (39.385), No. 12 on the beam (9.870) and No. 4 on vault (9.925).

Makayla Stambaugh is tied for No. 5 on the floor (9.910) and Laura-Ann Chong slipped into a tie for No. 4 on the bars (9.900).

Check out my story in Monday’s GT on how the mental choreography goes with the mental training for the Beavers.

Check out these videos of the team doing the floor at LSU.

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