No. 22 Utah State Gymnastics Selected to Salt Lake City Regional

Utah State's 22nd-ranked gymnastics team will compete at the Salt Lake City Regional, hosted by No. 6 Utah, on April 1-3, the NCAA announced during the National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Selection Show on Monday afternoon.

Joining the Aggies and Utes at the Salt Lake City Regional will be No. 3 LSU, No. 11 Arizona State, No. 14 Kentucky, No. 17 Boise State, No. 21 Southern Utah, Arizona and Temple. The nine-team field will compete at the Maverik Center in West Valley City.

"It is so exciting," said fourth-year USU head coach Amy Smith. "I am super thrilled at the work that this team put in all season and we are excited to go to regionals. We are guaranteed that first meet and we want to parlay it into night two. We are just really excited, and excited to get some exposure to other teams and compete, because, once again, we have a great product and a great team.

"I am happy to see the team fired up. They earned it and they have done such a great job this year. I am so proud of them and the work they have done."

Arizona and Temple will compete head-to-head on Thursday, April 1. The winner of that dual meet will then advance to the second round of competition on Friday, April 2, to compete against Utah State, Kentucky and LSU in the evening session, beginning at 7 o'clock.

Teams ranked No. 1-16 were seeded in the gymnastics bracket, while the remaining 20 teams were placed in regions geographically. Friday's afternoon session will feature Arizona State, Boise State and Southern Utah.

"We are excited," said Utah State senior Mikaela Meyer. "We have competed in this arena before, so it should be fun. We are in the night session, so it should be some great gymnastics and we are ready. A lot of predictions said we were going to be in the first session with Arizona State and Utah, but then we didn't see our name called, so I was like, 'Maybe we are going to Alabama,' but then our name showed up in the night session and it was like, 'Okay, there we go.'"

The top two finishing teams of each semifinal will advance to the NCAA Regional Final on Saturday, April 3, at 7 p.m. Following Saturday's competition, the top two finishers from the four regionals (Salt Lake City, Athens, Morgantown and Tuscaloosa) will advance to the 2021 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships in Fort Worth, Texas on April 16-17.

"I am really excited," said USU senior vault specialist Logan Varnadore. "I like the teams we are matched up against and we have a really good shot to put a whole meet together and do our best. I don't think we have had our best meet yet, so if we can put the work in this next week-and-a-half at practice, we really have a good shot, especially being in the night session and the teams we are matched up against."

This season will mark the second time in history that the women's gymnastics tournament will feature four-team formats all the way through the NCAA Championship finals. The new format eliminates the bye rotations in place with the previous six-team format and still allows 36 teams to qualify to regionals with the first day of regional competition becoming a play-in dual meet.

The Aggies will be competing in their 26th regional, and their first since 2017. USU's best finish at the NCAA Regionals was in 1999, when it hosted Georgia, Florida, Denver, Minnesota and Iowa State, and placed third.

Utah State is coming off a third-place finish at the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference Championships, which the Aggies hosted last Saturday night at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum. The Aggies recorded a 196.250 – their best score ever for a conference championship meet – which ranks as the seventh-best home score in school history.

"I'm ready to get out there and compete again in a big arena with big teams," Meyer said. "I'm excited to see how we compare with them."

Following the conclusion of the meet, the MRGC yearly awards were announced. Meyer earned first-team all-league honors on vault, while graduate Leighton Varnadore garnered second-team accolades on the event and a first-team citation in the all-around. For the second-consecutive year, senior Autumn DeHarde was named the MRGC Beam Specialist of the Year, as well as earning first-team accolades on the apparatus.

Fans can follow the Aggie gymnastics program at twitter.com/USUGymnastics, on Facebook at Utah State Gymnastics, and on Instagram at USUGymnastics. Fans can also follow the USU athletic program at twitter.com/USUAthletics or on Facebook at UtahStateAthletics.