• VIDEO: Maria Hundley
NCAA West Regional Gymnastics Championships
Saturday, April 2, 5:00 p.m. PDT (6 p.m. MDT)
Huntsman Center / Salt Lake City, Utah
• Webcast: http://pac-12.com/live/university-utah
• Live Scoring: http://www.utahutes.com/sports/w-gym/spec-rel/utah-w-gym-livestats.html
SEATTLE – For the second time in her career senior
Maria Hundley will represent Seattle Pacific in the regional championships for NCAA Division I women's gymnastics. She will compete at the West Regional on Saturday, April 2 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time (6 p.m. Mountain Time). The meet is hosted by the University of Utah and takes place at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.
Hundley is the first gymnast in nine years for the Division II Falcons to qualify as an all-arounder at the Division I regionals, since 2007 when Debra Huss and Sarah Jean Sullivan competed as all-arounders. Sullivan (now Marshall) is an assistant coach with the current SPU squad.
As a sophomore in 2014 Hundley qualified in three events for the NCAA regional on the Washington campus. She tied for 10th on the balance beam with a score of 9.800, was 14th on the vault (9.85) and 24th on the uneven bars (9.775).
The 2016 West Regional field features host and fourth-ranked Utah with a season-high score of 197.675, No. 8 UCLA (197.475), No. 17 Washington (196.650), No. 29 Illinois (196.525) and No. 32 Utah State (196.025).
Those six teams will be joined by four at-large all-around qualifiers, including Hundley, and eight individual event specialists who qualified based on their regional qualifying scores.
The two highest-scoring teams, and the top-two all-around competitors who are not on an advancing team, from each regional site will receive an automatic berth to the NCAA Championships on April 15-16 in Fort Worth, Texas.
In addition, the event winners at each regional site will advance to the national championships if they are not part of a qualifying team or an all-around qualifier.
MARIA HUNDLEY is SPU's most decorated gymnast, having collected a school-record five national championships to go along with seven All-America awards. She won the vault, uneven bars and balance beam titles at the 2014 USAG Collegiate Championships and then defended her bars and beam national crowns in 2015. Hundley added the floor exercise to her repertoire for the first time this season, enabling her to break the 11-year-old SPU all-around record on March 7 with a four-event total of 39.350 points. The Falcons school vault record of 9.875 has been achieved nine times and Hundley accounted for four of those. She boasts the program's second-best all-time scores on the bars (9.925) and beam (9.900). Hundley won 10 events titles and two all-around crowns this season despite competing against NCAA Division I opponents in every meet. She was the Falcons top scorer in 26 of the 44 rotations in which she competed this season.
Career Best Scores
All-Around – 39.350
Vault – 9.875
Uneven Bars – 9.925
Balance Beam – 9.900
Floor Exercise -- 9.850
NEXT WEEK
For the 34th time in 35 years, the Seattle Pacific women will compete at the national meet. They earned a berth into the eight-team USA Gymnastics Collegiate Championships field. The three-day national championship meet runs from April 8-10 in St. Charles, Mo.
Eight teams and 35 individual qualifiers from across the country will compete for team and individual national titles. The team semifinals will be conducted in two sessions, taking place on Friday, April 8 at Hyland Arena on the Lindenwood University campus.
Fourth-seeded SPU will participate in the first session at noon Pacific Time (2 p.m. Central) and open the meet on the vault. Also in the opening group will be top seed Bridgeport, No. 5 Cornell and No. 8 Air Force.
