• Complete Results (pdf)
      • VIDEO: Ariana  Harger interview
      • VIDEO: Rain  Sullivan floor routine
      • VIDEO: Alexa  Okamura beam routine

ST. CHARLES, Mo. – Ariana Harger and her teammates vaulted into the school record book Saturday in their final meet together.
 
Harger broke the school vault record for Seattle Pacific, which registered its highest score ever for the second straight day en route to a third-place finish in the team finals of the USA Gymnastics Women's Collegiate Championships in Hyland Arena.
 
Host Lindenwood successfully defended its title, winning with 195.875 points. Bridgeport was second with a score of 195.800 and Brown was fourth at 194.500.
 
The Falcons tallied 194.875 points, eclipsing the school-record total of 194.750 they amassed in Friday's semifinals. They have added three-tenths to the previous standard of 194.575 established in 2014.


 
"We did better than yesterday, and broke the school record that we set yesterday," exclaimed SPU coach Laurel Tindall. "It's hard to come back the second day and have an awesome meet. We had some misses, but I don't think we could have caught those two teams, they were a point out in front of us."
 
This is the third consecutive third-place national finish for the SPU gymnasts. The last time they finished higher was a runner-up result in 2007. They have three national championships to their credit, in 1986, 1992 and 1997.
 
"Third is good," Tindall added. "Three years in a row third, we would like to break this cycle as long as we do it in the right direction … up."
 
An upward trend describes the 2016 season as SPU started slowly. After opening on January 9 with a 188.750, the Falcons failed to reach 190 points in their first four meets.
 
The 194-point plateau proved elusive until this weekend.
 
"Definitely we had a rough start," Tindall described of the early-season struggles. "We knew we were better than that, but they just really couldn't seem to put it together. It took them several weeks to really turn it around this year."
 
The Falcons didn't start slow Saturday. They owned the lead at the midway mark after a historic performance on the vault.

 

Harger solidly stuck her landing and was rewarded a score of 9.90 that broke the school record on that apparatus. The previous vault standard of 9.875 had been reached on 10 occasions, five times by current senior Maria Hundley.
 
"Ariana was great," said Tindall, whose arms flung into the air the instant Harger made her perfect landing. "That's the first time I've seen her completely stick a vault and if she'd have done that (Friday) night she would have qualified for the vault finals."
 
Harger's heroics, along with stellar scores from Hundley (9.875), Lauren Glover (9.80), Breanna Beltran (9.70) and Maryanna Peterson (9.575) added up to the team's top vault score of all-time, 48.850. That surpassed the total of 48.725 established at the 2014 nationals.
 
SPU started the finals on the floor and claimed an early lead of 0.075 points over second-place Bridgeport. A team score of 48.925 was fueled by a 9.875 from Harger in the anchor position.
 
As it was in the semifinal, the uneven bars event was the most difficult for the Falcons, who forged 48.250 points. Peterson, a freshman, was their top bars performer with a 9.775.
 
The Falcons found themselves in fourth place going into the last event in a tightly packed field in which .0675 points separated first (Lindenwood, 146.700) from last (SPU, 146.025).
 
During the final rotation SPU produced a score of 48.850 on the balance beam, coming within one-tenth of the school record on that apparatus. The final three competitors each scored a 9.825, Tracie Villanueva, Hundley and Kristi Hayashida.

 

Saturday marked the final meet for SPU as a complete team. Seniors Alexa Okamura and Rain Sullivan performed for the final time in a Falcons leotard. (You can view the final routine for Okamura here and Sullivan here.)
 
The gymnastics season concludes on Sunday with the individual event finals at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. The field was determined based on gymnasts' scores during Friday's semifinals.
 
Five Falcons qualified for the event finals, including Hundley in three events. The SPU senior was crowned the national all-around champion on Friday after posting a school-record total of 39.40 over the four events. That was Hundley's sixth national title, the most ever for a Falcons gymnast.
 
She won event championships on the vault, bars and beam at the 2014 nationals and defended the bars and beam titles in 2015.
 
Hundley will be joined in Sunday's beam finals by Hayashida, who earned the bronze medal on that apparatus at last year's nationals. Beltran will compete alongside Hundley in the bars finals.
 
The floor field features a pair of Falcons. Harger seeks to improve on last season's fourth-place national finish while Glover makes her finals debut.

 

Hundley was the Falcons lone vault qualifier.
 
"It's going to be a great meet tomorrow. The scores are going to be high," Tindall projected.
 
"People are going to have to hit to get national titles. So, we'll just see if we can get some more hardware to take home."
 
This year's Falcons finalists seek to add to the school's list of 29 individual national championships.
 
SPU competed at the national meet for the 34th time in the last 35 years.
 
The NCAA does not sponsor a championship meet for Division II schools. The USAG Collegiate Championships include NCAA Division II members and Division I schools that choose to adhere to the limit of 7-1/2 scholarships. This year's eight-team championship field featured four Division II schools, three of which advanced to the finals, and four Division I entries.
 
Next year, the Falcons will host the three-day USAG Championships. The 2017 meet will take place April 7-9 in Brougham Pavilion on the SPU campus.
 
 
NCAA GYMNASTICS
USAG Women's Collegiate Championships
Hyland Arena / St. Charles, Mo.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
 
Team Finals
1, Lindenwood, 195.875
2, Bridgeport, 195.800
3, Seattle Pacific, 194.875
4, Brown, 194.500
 
 
SPU Individual Event Qualifiers 
(Sunday, April 10, 11:00 a.m. PDT)
Vault -- Maria Hundley
Uneven Bars – Breanna Beltran, Maria Hundley.
Balance Beam -- Kristi Hayashida, Maria Hundley.
Floor Exercise – Lauren Glover, Ariana Harger.