The University of Utahâs womenâs gymnastics team isnât all that used to losing. Especially not in Pac-12 Conference competition.
It happens, sure, but year after year the Red Rocks have been the class of the conference since joining in 2012, particularly the last few years.
Saturday afternoon in Berkeley, California, Utah may have been unseated as the preeminent Pac-12 power, though, in this the final year of the conference.
In a showdown between top 5 teams â No. 3 Cal and No. 4 Utah â the Red Rocks came up short, losing to the Bears 198.100 to 197.700. Cal was the better team on multiple events â uneven bars and vault â while proving equal to Utah on floor exercise.
Cal sophomore eMjae Frazier was the best gymnast in the meet, winning the all-around title plus three other events titles â bars, floor and balance beam.
Only two Red Rocks â Ashley Glynn and Jaedyn Rucker â came away with some hardware, tying for the event title on vault with a pair of Cal gymnasts (Mya Lauzon and Kyen Mayhew).
With the loss, Utah now trails Cal in the race for the Pac-12 regular season title, a prize the Utes have claimed the last four years. And with only one more conference meet to go (at Arizona on Friday) Utah will need Cal to lose to Stanford on March 10 in order to get a share of the title.
As such, it was a disappointing outing for the Red Rocks, who expect to win conference championships â regular season and postseason â year after year.
âNot the total outcome we were hoping for today,â Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf said.
Wins and losses donât tell the whole story in gymnastics, however, and though the Red Rocks lost, they left California in better position than when they arrived.
With the score of 197.700, Utah improved its national qualifying score (NQS) which determines rankings during the regular season and postseason seeding.
Moreover, Utah withstood the absence of two notable gymnasts â Amelie Morgan and Makenna Smith â for most of the meet and still managed to compete at or near the same level of the Bears, who are a genuine national title threat this year.
âA pretty decent road score for us,â Dockendorf said. âI love that the team fought to the very end. We didnât give up. We definitely gave some tenths (of a point) away on our bars and our landings, and also on vault. … We made a lot of lineup changes as the meet was unfolding. We made a lineup change on three events. A lot of adjusting had to happen today and I was just proud that our team stayed focused throughout the meet.â
Utah lost the meet early.
As mentioned by Dockendorf, the Red Rocks left something to be desired on both bars and vault. Landings in particular were less than Utah wanted, with hops and steps the norm.
In the meantime, Cal had a standout performance on bars with three gymnasts â Frazier, Gabby Perea and Madelyn Williams â closing out the rotation with consecutive 9.975s.
It was that rotation that won the meet for the Bears. Utah outperformed Cal the second half of the competition, but the Bearsâ prowess on bars, coupled with Utahâs early mistakes, proved too much for the Red Rocks to overcome.
âWe definitely need to be more disciplined with our execution,â Dockendorf said.
Even with those miscues, Utah was in the competition late. That was in no small part to the teamâs floor lineup.
Across the board â save for a notable poor outing from Grace McCallum â Utah was excellent on floor, counting a low score of 9.875 from Abby Paulson.
Maile OâKeefe, Ella Zirbes, Jaylene Gilstrap and Jaedyn Rucker all competed well as Utah made clear again that it is a floor team this season.
âFloor is the one event where we had the least amount of lineup changes from last year,â Dockendorf said. âI think there is a lot of confidence and experience coming into that lineup and I think our performance quality is elevated this year and it is reflecting in our scores for sure.â
Utahâs effort on floor didnât prove enough to overcome Cal, but it put the Red Rocks in a position to win if the Bears had made mistakes and it gave Utah the boost it needed to come away with a notable road score.
Makenna Smith had been one of Utahâs most consistent competitors this season, but after stumbling on her vault landing, the sophomore was pulled from the lineup the rest of the night (she was slated to compete in the all-around).
It wasnât anything too serious, Dockendorf noted. Smithâs back flared up during the week and after her struggles on vault Utahâs coaching staff decided to play things safe after it flared up again.
As a result, Camie Winger and Jaedyn Rucker both had to serve as emergency replacements and both did exceptionally well.
Rucker scored a 9.90 on floor in place of Smith, a step in the right direction for the fifth-year senior.
âI was extremely proud of Jaedyn,â Dockendorf said. âShe wasnât scheduled to be in the lineup today, but with Makennaâs back flaring up it was a last-minute change. Jaedyn has been working so hard in practice and for her to go out there and do a normal Jaedyn routine was huge tonight.â
Winger, meanwhile, was no less impressive filling in on beam.
She led off the rotation â one she has not regularly competed in â and earned a 9.850, setting the stage for a strong outing by Utah.
All as a true freshman.
âCamie loves to compete,â Dockendorf said. âThat is where she thrives. … The more pressure the more she loves it. She is really a utility gymnast and what I mean by that is she can kind of go anywhere in any lineup in any space and still be able to go and perform.â
In order to capitalize on Wingerâs innate traits, Dockendorf didnât tell her sheâd be competing in place of Smith until the very last moment.
âI didnât want her thinking about it the entire meet,â Dockendorf said. âI knew that Cam would be able to handle it.â
As noted, Utah was not perfect in the meet. Bars and vault â thought solid rotations â were not up to the standard that Utah needs them to be in order to compete with the best teams in the country, which Cal is.
On bars, the miscues were primarily landing related. Gymnasts showed a lack of patience when holding landings, which led to steps forward and back. There were also rushed handstands and leg separation on transitions between the high and low bars, mistakes that can be found in any NCAA meet week after week, only Utah had too many of them.
It was a similar story on vault, with steps taken as gymnasts tried a little too hard to stick their landings. Or in the case of Smith, were hampered by injury.
Utah wasnât perfect on floor or beam, either, with notable mistakes from McCallum and Elizabeth Ganter on floor and beam, respectively.
But it was bars and vault where the Red Rocks lost the meet and where they will need to be better going forward, particularly come the postseason.
âOn bars, we left some points out there,â Dockendorf said. âSame as on vault. Absolutely if we want to contend for the national title and Pac-12 title, we are going to have to clean up some details still.
âI mentioned earlier this week that that was going to be important for us to focus on and some of the mistakes we saw tonight are mistakes we havenât been seeing.â
Utah lost. Cal was the better team. But the Red Rocks were competitive on the road against a team they will likely see again a couple more times this year.
Utah improved its NQS, all while handling unexpected changes in lineups and the absence of Morgan, who remains in England for the time being while she vies for a spot on Team Great Britain for the Paris Olympics this summer.
Really, Utah proved capable of competing with an elite team while not at its best, which can only bode well for the future.
âIt is going to fire them up,â Dockendorf said. âThey know that we left a lot out there. Multiple lineup changes today with Amelie out and Makenna didnât do all her events and Grace didnât do her normal stuff today.
âThose are all excuses, which I am not going to use for our performance today, but (today) definitely is something we can think about for our potential come postseason.â
SALT LAKE CITY — A controversial Utah proposal to crack down on the presence of immigrants in the country illegally that had seemed stalled gained new life Friday, passing muster in new form in a relatively narrow vote.
In a 39-33 vote, the Utah House approved HB386 — amended with portions of HB88, which stalled in the House on Monday — and the revamped measure now goes to the Utah Senate for consideration.
The reworked version of HB386, originally meant just to repeal outdated immigration legislation, now also contains provisions prohibiting immigrants in the country illegally from being able to tap into in-state university tuition, certain home loan programs and certain professional licensing.
The new HB386 isn’t as far-reaching as HB88, which also would have prohibited immigrants in the country illegally from being able to access certain public benefits like food at food pantries, immunizations for communicable diseases and emergency housing.
Moreover, Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton and the HB88 sponsor, stressed that the new provisions in HB386 wouldn’t impact immigrants in the country legally. He touted HB88 as a means of making sure taxpayer money isn’t funneled to programming that immigrants in the country illegally can tap.
Rep. Lisa Shepherd, R-Provo, the HB386 sponsor, sounded a similar message, referencing, with chagrin, the provision allowing certain students in the country illegally to access lower in-state tuition rates at Utah’s public universities. Because of such provisions “we’re taking care of other countries’ children first, and I want to take care of Utahns first. In my campaign I ran and said Utahns first and this bill will put Utahns first,” she said.
If we stop young folks who have lived here much of their life from going to school and getting an education, it is really clear to me that we have hurt that person. It’s not clear to me at all that we have benefitted the rest of us.
The relatively narrow 39-33 vote, atypical in the GOP-dominated Utah Legislature, followed several other narrow, hotly contested procedural votes to formally amend HB386. Foes, including both Democrats and Republicans, took particular umbrage with provisions prohibiting immigrants in the country illegally from being able to pay in-state tuition and access certain scholarships.
As is, students in the country illegally who have attended high school for at least three years in Utah and meet other guidelines may pay lower in-state tuition, but if they have to pay out-of-state tuition instead, they could no longer afford to go to college.
“If we stop young folks who have lived here much of their life from going to school and getting an education, it is really clear to me that we have hurt that person. It’s not clear to me at all that we have benefitted the rest of us,” said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful.
Rep. Hoang Nguyen, D-Salt Lake City, noted her own hardscrabble upbringing as an immigrant from Vietnam and said the changes outlined in the reworked version of HB386 run counter to what she believes Utah stands for.
“I fear that what we’re doing here in Utah is we are eroding what truly makes Utah special, the Utah way. We are starting to adopt policies that are regressive and don’t take care of people. Utahns are one thing. Citizens are one thing. People is the first thing,” she said.
Rep. John Arthur, D-Cottonwood Heights, said the measure sends a negative message to the immigrant students impacted.
“If we pass this bill today, colleagues, we will be telling these young people — again, who have graduated from our high schools, these kids who have gone to at least three years of school here — that you’re no longer a Utahn,” he said.
If we are compassionate to those who come the legal way and we are compassionate to those who already live here, that does not mean that we lack compassion for others in other ways.
Rep. Kristen Chevrier, R-Highland, said the debate underscores a “fallacy” about compassion. She backed the reworked version of HB386, saying Utah resources should be first spend on those in the country legally.
“If we are compassionate to those who come the legal way and we are compassionate to those who already live here, that does not mean that we lack compassion for others in other ways,” she said.
The original version of HB386 calls for repeal of immigration laws on the books that are outdated because other triggering requirements have not been met or they run counter to federal law.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — A man died after he was caught in an avalanche in Big Cottonwood Canyon over the weekend.
A spokesperson for the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Thursday that Kevin Williams, 57, had died.
He, along with one other person, was hospitalized in critical condition after Saturday’s avalanche in the backcountry.
In an interview with 2News earlier this week, one of Williams’ close friends, Nate Burbidge, described him as a loving family man.
“Kevin’s an amazing guy. He’s always serving, looking for ways that he can connect with others,” Burbidge said.
A GoFundMe was set up to help support Williams’ family.
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CONTENT WARNING: This report discusses suicide and includes descriptions of audio from 911 calls that some viewers may find disturbing.
LAS VEGAS — Exclusively obtained 911 recordings detail the hours leading up to the discovery of an 11-year-old Utah girl and her mother dead inside a Las Vegas hotel room in an apparent murder-suicide.
Addi Smith and her mother, Tawnia McGeehan, lived in West Jordan and had traveled to Nevada for the JAMZ cheerleading competition.
The calls show a growing sense of urgency from family members and coaches, and several hours passing before relatives learned what happened.
Below is a timeline of the key moments, according to dispatch records. All times are Pacific Time.
After Addi and her mother failed to appear at the cheerleading competition, Addi’s father and stepmother called dispatch for a welfare check.
Addi and her mother were staying at the Rio hotel. The father told dispatch that hotel security had already attempted contact.
“Security went up and knocked on the door. There’s no answer or response it doesn’t look like they checked out or anything…”
As concern grew, Addi’s coach contacted the police two times within minutes.
“We think the child possibly is in imminent danger…”
Addi’s stepmother placed another call to dispatch, expressing escalating concern.
“We are extremely concerned we believe that something might have seriously happened.”
She said that Tawnia’s car was still at the hotel.
Police indicated officers were on the way.
Nearly three hours after the initial welfare check request, fire personnel were en route to the scene. It appeared they had been in contact with hotel security.
Fire told police that they were responding to a possible suicide.
“They found a note on the door.”
Emergency medical personnel at the scene told police they had located two victims.
“It’s going to be gunshot wound to the head for both patients with notes”
A dispatcher responded:
“Oh my goodness that’s not okay.”
Moments later, fire personnel relayed their assessment to law enforcement:
“It’s going to be a murder suicide, a juvenile and a mother.”
Unaware of what had been discovered, Addi’s father called dispatch again.
“I’m trying to file a missing persons report for my daughter.”
He repeats the details he knows for the second time.
Father and stepmother call again seeking information and continue to press for answers.
“We just need some information. There was a room check done around 3:00 we really don’t know where to start with all of this Can we have them call us back immediately?”
Dispatch responded:
“As soon as there’s a free officer, we’ll have them reach out to you.”
More than an hour later, Addi’s father was put in contact with the police on the scene. He pleaded for immediate action.
“I need someone there I need someone there looking in that room”
The officer confirmed that they had officers currently in the room.
Addi’s father asks again what they found, if Addi and her mother are there, and if their things were missing.
The officer, who was not on scene, said he had received limited information.
Nearly seven hours after the first welfare check request, Addi’s grandmother contacted police, describing conflicting information circulating within the family.
“Some people are telling us that they were able to get in, and they were not in the hotel room, and other people saying they were not able to get in the hotel room, and we need to know”
She repeated the details of the case. Dispatch said officers will call her back once they have more information.
Later that evening, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police held a news conference confirming that Addi and her mother, Tawnia McGeehan, were found dead inside the hotel room.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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