Utah gymnastics will enter the postseason in the best form possible form. Exactly the way that teams hope.
After a season best described as consistently inconsistent â the Red Rocks scored in the 197.7-197.8 range in five meets and regularly did well on three of the four events â Utah put it all together Friday night in its regular season finale at the Huntsman Center.
Led by senior Abby Paulson, who recorded the second perfect 10 of her career, plus a stellar all-around outing from junior Grace McCallum, Utah recorded a season-high 198.300 in a victory over Stanford and Utah State.
That score is the fifth-highest ever recorded by a Utah gymnastics team, behind only a 198.600 posted against BYU in 2004, a 198.575 earned against Minnesota in 2022, a 198.550 against Cal in 2023 and a 198.425 against BYU in 2002.
âWhat a special night,â Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf said. âFor the whole team, but especially for the seniors for us to go out with our season high with some incredible routines. Just overall, to have the Huntsman as packed as it has been all season was a special moment. Just really proud of the work the team is putting in.
â… They really have been dialed in and intentional in practice, not just making their routines but making them with adjustments. It is going to take more and more days of practice for that to show up and tonight we did see some changes. We didnât just see the same mistakes. Is there room to improve? Absolutely there is room to improve, but really big strides from where we started to where we are now.â
Utah dominated in basically every way Friday, scoring a 49.500 or better on every event. A Red Rock won every single event title, with McCallum in the all-around and on floor exercise, uneven bars and vault and Paulson winning the beam title.
Stanford finished a distant second in the meet with a 196.500 â yes, the Red Rocks nearly beat the Cardinal by two points â while Utah State was third with a 195.225.
It was exactly the sort of meet teams hope for late in the regular season with the postseason beckoning.
âTonight was really important to get that score,â Dockendorf said. âI think it provides confidence to the team, to know that they are capable of doing that.â
Paulson was perfect. In a meet filled with notable gymnastics, no single moment was more touching, more chilling or more memorable than the fifth-year seniorâs perfection on beam.
Paulson, notably, had a perfect 10 in her career previously, on the road at UCLA her freshmen season.
Since then, however, she had come up short time and again, though Dockendorf noted that she believed Paulson had competed numerous perfect beam routines this season.
Against Stanford and Utah State, the judges agreed with Dockendorfâs assessment.
The routine was something in and of itself, but the reaction was even more notable. Few dry eyes existed in the arena after Paulson stuck her landing. Paulson herself, a fierce competitor, couldnât keep it together, crying into her own hands.
âI came into today trying not to put a lot of pressure on myself,â Paulson said. âCarly asked me (before I competed) what I was going to do, and I said âIâm going to be calm and confident,â like I do every single time.
âWhen I was up on the beam I was trying to focus on my routine, focus on my song, instead of focusing on the fact that it was my last beam routine in the Huntsman. But I couldnât really hold it together when I landed. Iâm just really grateful for everything.â
Maile OâKeefe is no stranger to perfect beam routines, having recorded a record 13 in her career. Seeing Paulson get another one, even though she was next up to compete, was a moment the senior wonât soon forget.
âShe (Paulson) is an amazing beam worker. It has just been a matter of time before she got it,â OâKeefe said of Paulson. âIt is quite special to just be doing my mental set and focusing on myself but also rooting for her very intently while Iâm doing it. It was amazing to hear the crowd go wild and to turn around and see her breaking down, so happy, it made me so happy. … It was amazing to see her accomplish that.â
In a meet like the one Utah had, nearly every routine could warrant mention for one reason or another.
Still, there were multiple routines that were season and/or career defining.
Camie Winger recorded a new career high on uneven bars, a 9.90 in just her third counted routine as a Utah gymnast on the event. Jaylene Gilstrap tied her career high on floor with a 9.95, with one judge even handing out a perfect 10.
McCallum was nearly perfect on multiple events â bars and floor â and looked capable of competing with the best all-around gymnasts in the country. And not even a year ago she wasnât able to compete gymnastics at all after a serious knee injury.
Perhaps most encouraging of all though, was the bars routine by Alani Sabado. The senior was had an up-and-down final season, mirroring what has been an up-and-down four-year career at Utah.
There have been moments this year where Sabado has looked like an integral part of the Red Rocksâ bars lineup and other moments were it can be argued she shouldnât have been in the lineup.
Against Stanford and Utah State, though, she competed the single best bars routine of her collegiate career, in a moment where Utah needed her to hit, else the team would have to count a 9.00 from freshmen Ella Zirbes.
Sabadoâs routine was such that Dockendorf called it her favorite of the night.
âI was incredibly proud of Alani,â Dockendorf said. âShe has been working so hard at picking up 0.5 (deductions) in her routine. She has been coming in to practice and really focusing on those things.
âFor her to go out there and make some of those small changes that sheâs been doing, that was probably one of my favorite moments from tonight, watching her hit that bar routine, knowing how much work sheâs truly put in to elevate her score.â
As noted by Dockendorf, Utah on the whole wasnât perfect, historic score aside. There were steps on landings still â particularly on vault and bars â and slight mistakes like leg separation prevented gymnasts such as McCallum from getting perfect 10s of their own.
Just look at OâKeefeâs performance â she scored a 9.850 on bars, a 9.90 on beam and a 9.925 on floor â and there were clear routines that could have been better, that have been better in the past and likely will be better going forward.
Vault again was the most glaring when it came to mistakes, only because of landings. No gymnast was able to truly stick their landing, though Rucker fought hard to get a stick.
Of course, Rucker struggled with her block and got very little height or distance on her vault, which contrasted well with efforts by Ashley Glynn and Jaylene Gilstrap, both of whom got incredible height and distance on their vaults yet couldnât control their landings.
Even in a floor rotation that scored a 49.700, tying the Red Rocksâ season high on the event, there was room for improvement, albeit not much.
With the postseason up next, however, the Red Rocks will need to continue to clean up the little mistakes.
The first thing Utahâs gymnasts will say following a meet is that they donât look at scores. Scores are out of their control. Their gymnastics arenât.
âTo be honest we werenât really focused on the score, we were focused on going out and hitting four solid events, beginning to end of each lineup, to be confident in our routines and be happy with how we did,â Paulson said. âObviously when we do that we are going to get the scores that we want.â
And yet, a 198.300 is the type of score that matters. As Rucker put it while looking at the score sheet after meet, âOh, we slayed.â
With its season-high score, Utah showed again that it is capable of hitting that 198 and beyond, a score necessary to compete with the best teams in the upcoming postseason.
Friday nightâs meet showed that Utah has the potential and capability to compete as well as anyone. Now the challenge is to do so consistently.
âWeâve been scoring 197.8, 197.5, in that area,â Dockendorf said. âIf we just stuck two more beam dismounts, one more vault and one more bar routine we would be over 198 every single meet, and that is pretty much what we did tonight.
âWe didnât stick everything, but we did add two stuck dismounts here, one stuck dismount there and that is where we end up. Seeing that in action really shows that there is more we can do to elevate our score moving forward.â
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jazz fans celebrate as the Utah Jazz pick Darryn Peterson in the 2026 NBA Draft during a watch party at The Shops at South Town in Sandy, on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah mother, who believed she was saving her kids from “the end of times,” is facing federal kidnapping charges after she fled to Croatia with her four children.
Elleshia Anne Seymour, 35, of West Jordan, is accused of traveling to Europe with her four children without court approval or permission from the fathers of the children. On Jan. 28, she was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of international parental kidnapping and passport fraud. She made her initial federal court appearance Monday.
West Jordan police started urgently searching for the four kids in December after Kendall Seymour — father to the three oldest children — realized something was wrong when they didn’t show up to daycare. He had last seen the children a week prior when he dropped them off at school the week of Thanksgiving, which was the start of the mother’s scheduled custody time.
“Seymour did not notify the father of her intent to travel internationally with the children as required by the custody order,” federal prosecutors said.
The father told police he believed Seymour may have taken the children out of the country and forged his signature on the passport applications because he found passport-related envelopes in the trash at her apartment and other evidence that indicated she had left the country.
Elleshia Seymour was charged in 3rd District Court on Dec. 16 with four counts of custodial interference, a third-degree felony. A warrant was issued for her arrest as, according to charging documents, she “recently discussed obtaining passports and leaving the country, expressing concerns about biblical events and the ‘end of times’” with her ex-boyfriend.
Investigators located surveillance footage at the Salt Lake airport showing Seymour and the kids boarding a one-way flight to Croatia with a layover in Amsterdam. In a voicemail to her other ex-husband — the father of the youngest child — she claimed she was in France looking for a permanent residence.
“Seymour reminded him she had to get the children out of the country because the ‘end time is coming.’ Seymour allegedly told her ex-husband and father of the fourth child she wanted him to join them and asked him not to let the three children’s father know where she was,” federal prosecutors said.
Kendall Seymour said he was initially unaware of any of these beliefs and was concerned “she’s not in the right mind.” While there were no signs of the “doomsday” beliefs when they were married, he found a TikTok account where she was posting increasingly extreme religious messages.
With posts titled “Urgent Word,” “Brace Yourself,” “Zombies,” and “US Decimated,” she spoke of darkness consuming America, urged followers to “get provisions,” and warned that Salt Lake City would soon be destroyed. Police said witnesses they spoke to indicated Seymour had “previously suffered from emotional breakdowns and hallucinations.”
On Jan. 16, Seymour was arrested by Croatian authorities. The children were found in a state-run Croatian orphanage.
“It sounds like she met this other American citizen in Croatia under the pretense that she was bringing the kids here legally,” Kendall Seymour said. Once the American citizen living in Croatia heard the news about the children, the police were called, and their mother was taken into custody by Croatian authorities, the father said.
He was then contacted by Croatian police, who were holding the kids in a children’s home in the country. Croatian police at first would not release his children until documentation from the U.S. had been checked and rechecked. He stayed in the country for eight days trying to get them released.
On Feb. 1, he announced on a GoFundMe* that he and the four children were on their way home.
Seymour was extradited to Utah from Croatia on June 12 and was booked into the Davis County Jail. She has a detention hearing scheduled next week in federal court and an initial appearance for the state charges on July 13.
“The safe return of the children remains our highest priority. We are deeply grateful to our federal and international partners for their tireless efforts in bringing about this successful outcome,” said U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak for the District of Utah. “Our work is not finished — we will continue to pursue justice in the case against Seymour.”
*KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisers and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
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.
The Utah Jazz are just hours away from the 2026 NBA Draft to determine who will be their franchise’s next cornerstone piece to add into their exciting core with their second-overall pick on the board.
And in the lead-up to the Jazz’s selection, there’s been tons of buzz surrounding who will be the one landing at that No. 2 slot. Between AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Cameron Boozer, each has seen various connections to Utah as being the guy they’ll end up with.
However, as we continue to get closer to when the Jazz are on the clock, we’re starting to get some clearer intel on who their selection ultimately might be. And in reality, it might just be a two-man race, rather than three.
ESPN‘s Jeremy Woo recently released his final 2026 mock sorting out how each of the draft’s 60 picks are going to go. When it came to the Jazz, the pick would be none other than Kansas guard Darryn Peterson; someone that Utah has reportedly shown “strong interest” in leading up to the draft.
If Peterson ends up going first to the Washington Wizards, though, AJ Dybantsa seems like the most likely outcome for the Jazz at two.
“Sources say the Jazz have shown strong interest in Peterson throughout the process, and the expectation from rival teams has been that Utah will pick whichever of Peterson or Dybantsa falls to them,” Woo wrote.
“Peterson’s initial decision to only visit Washington was more reflective of his confidence in his security as a top pick and desire to hear his name called first.”
Despite the noise that had surrounding Peterson, his canceled workout, and any possible disinterest in landing with Utah, that buzz has since been shut down in the days leading up to Tuesday night’s first round.
Not only did Peterson confirm he has met with the Jazz before coming to New York following his canceled draft workout, but he also made it clear at Monday’s media day that he’s not dodging any team that’s willing to select him.
That, of course, would include the Jazz. So no worries on that front.
But even if Peterson does end up going ahead of the Jazz’s slot in what would be a surprise pickup for the Wizards at the first pick, Utah’s decision looks like it could be a relatively simple one. BYU’s AJ Dybantsa would be sitting up for grabs, and would be an ideal fit on the wing to Utah’s two-guard spot for the future.
So if Woo’s intel is a sign of anything, it seems like, even with the appeal that might be had in Duke’s Cameron Boozer as a potential option at number two, he’s looking more and more like the odd man out when it comes to being the guy for Utah.
Both Peterson and Dybantsa have a projected ceiling that tops what Boozer brings to the table, and fits better with this current Jazz core as their future two-guard. In a draft where all three prospects are seen as franchise-changing talents, those factors might just be what’s narrowly separated the top two as the targets to watch for Utah.
All of the chatter that’s ensued before the draft surrounding who the Jazz are going to take with their highest pick on the board in over 40 years will officially come to an end Tuesday night. But with the time quickly approaching before that decision becomes final, the writing might be on the wall for who they’ll be landing on.
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