After starting the season off with two road wins over Stanford and Air Force, the San Jose State gymnastics team had its home opener in front of alumni, in a tri-meet against Sacramento State and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
SJSU had the highest overall team score, tallying 195.150 points.
SJSU gymnast Emma Milne had a career day, racking up 9.925 points on the beam and winning her first beam title of the season.
Milne also led the team on bars with 9.925 points, winning her second bars title in four meets and tying for the second-highest score in Spartan history.
Junior Jaudai Lopes said competing well for the alumni was especially important because, without them, the team wouldn’t be where they are today.
Lopes led the Spartans in the vault with a score of 9.850.
“It means a lot to us [competing] because without them building this program up and without them, we wouldn’t be where we are at right now,” Lopes said.
SJSU struggled on the vault to begin the meet and found themselves chasing both the Hornets and the Eagles in the team score after the first rotation.
“We started off really rough on vault, and they didn’t have the vault table set for one of our best vaulters and she crashed, it wasn’t her fault at all,” said SJSU head coach Joanne Bowers. Bowers said this forced her team to readjust and execute in the remaining events.
Even with the rocky start, Bowers said the Spartans performed incredibly well on the bars and beam.
“They went to bars and knocked it out of the park on bars, did a great job, did a great job on beam,” Bowers said.
The Spartans sprung their way through the screams of the crowd on the floor of the meet.
Lopes said when her nerves set in, she took a few breaths and reverted back to her practice to help calm her down.
“I just make sure to take a couple deep breaths and tell myself to do what I do in practice, because what I do in practice is the reason why I’m competing,” she said.
Lopes said having her teammates cheer her on is great support and is beneficial on the floor, where she had her second highest score of the meet.
“That [camaraderie] is so important, especially on floor because sometimes you can get really tired so having them kind of push you and cheer for you really helps,” Lopes said.
Bowers said she hopes Provident Credit Union Event Center gets even louder in the future and wants the SJSU gymnastics crowd to match the energy she has seen at other colleges.
“We want to build this thing where we can pack this entire place, and if you watch college gymnastics around the country, everybody is selling out their arenas,” Bowers said. “It’s fun, good family stuff, that’s what we want to build here.”
SJSU will face UC Davis at 2 p.m. Sunday at University Credit Union Center in Davis, Calif.
