By: Nadia Testroet
After being ranked in the top 25 nationally all season long, the Arizona State Sun Devils are coming off a strong 2018 campaign, and while they may not be considered a top powerhouse yet, they are hoping to build off last year’s success to bring themselves to the next level.
Led by 2018 Pac-12 Coach of the Year, Jay Santos, and assistant head coach Jessica Santos, the Sun Devils have a lot of momentum heading into the 2019 season. Although ASU came up short of qualifying to Nationals as a team, they still qualified for the NCAA regionals for the first time since 2014, and sent 2018 Pac-12 Freshman/Newcomer of the Year Cairo Leonard-Baker to nationals as an individual all-around competitor. In the Santos’ third season at ASU, they have a strong and talented group that is eager to prove that their previous season wasn’t a fluke.
“Honestly, we came into this summer, and we were more of a cohesive group,” Leonard-Baker said.“We did more things together, and we worked a lot harder on getting to that next level. We’re really working more as doing it all together and everybody being on the same page and everyone working towards the same goals.”
While ASU graduated lone senior, Nichelle Christopherson, they are returning 14 gymnasts from last season and adding three freshmen, Jasmine Gutierrez, Stephanie Tripodi and Kaitlin Harvey, to their roster. Jess Santos says all three gymnasts bring new, unique skills and difficulty to several of the lineups and are all capable of competing right away for the Gym Devils.
“We’re in a very fortunate situation where we didn’t lose a lot of competition routines,” Jess Santos said. “We’re returning everyone that we had last year. We had a couple injuries in the middle of the season, and all of those student-athletes are on their way back and should be healthy by January, so automatically we start with a great foundation.”
ASU will be relying on their 12 upperclassmen’s experience to lead the Sun Devils to their first national championship berth since 2006.
“I think it’s really good just to have people on the team who have had competition experience because we go out there, we know what to expect, and us going out confident can really help the underclassmen come out confident,” redshirt junior Morgan Wilson said.
In 2018, Arizona State ended the season at No. 23, improving 18 spots ahead of their 2017 finish. The Sun Devils also improved their average team score from 195.145 to 196.545.
“I think our goal for this year is to take what we accomplished last year and to make it a little better and see if we can continue to grow and improve as a program,” Santos said.
Leading the 2019 roster will be all-around duo, Leonard-Baker, and 2012 French Olympian Anne Kuhm. The sophomore and senior consistently competed in the all-around with Leonard-Baker taking away four all-around titles in her freshman campaign.
Leonard-Baker posted 13 scores of 9.9 or better to win 12 individual titles and finished as one of the top-three freshman all-around gymnasts in the country. She also racked up five Pac-12 Freshman/Newcomer of the Week Awards and her best performance came in the meet against California when she boasted a 39.575.
Kuhm was a surprise standout for the Gym Devils after transferring to ASU from France. She competed in the all-around 12 of the 13 meets last year and scored 9.9 or better four times. Her best performance came in the Territorial Cup meet against state rival University of Arizona when she scored a career-best 39.450, earning her a second place finish.
The Sun Devils have a tough schedule ahead of them competing against six teams that advanced to the 2018 NCAA National Championships including the National Champion UCLA Bruins and runner-up Oklahoma Sooners. But Santos also says that the team has been working hard throughout the preseason and he is working to keep them hungry for success and their expectations high so they can continue to strive for greatness and not become complacent.
“A lot of things went right for us last year, so right now we are working through the preseason to see what areas can be improved even more,” Santos said. “I think we raised our expectations as a team after our success last year and we’re trying to see where we can continue to build upon that success.”
The Sun Devils will compete in their annual Maroon and Gold showcase Dec. 15 and will open their 2019 season in Wells Fargo Arena Jan. 4 in a quad-meet with Minnesota, Missouri and University of Illinois-Chicago.
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