Ellington

“Sometimes, you can have all the talent in the world,” said Washington gymnastics head coach Joanne Bowers, “but it all comes down to who’s going to do it when it counts — under pressure.”

Pressure, and how to manage it, have been key issues for the young UW gymnasts as they approach the upcoming season. This Friday, at the intra-squad competition, the team will be able to evaluate its progress.

“We’ve had a lot of pressure sets (high-pressure practice situations), but we don’t know what’s going to happen on the floor with the judges,“ junior Haley Bogart said. “We’re not sure what to expect on Friday. Afterwards, we’ll have a better idea of where we are.”

Although the results of Friday’s competition won’t count toward regional qualifying, they’ll help the team get ready for a tough schedule ahead. The 25th-ranked Washington team is competing against five ranked programs in its first five meets, including perennial powerhouses like No. 2 Utah, No. 5 UCLA and No. 7 Stanford. With the likes of No. 15 Nebraska and No. 20 Oregon State rounding out the rest of this daunting stretch, the UW’s gymnasts won’t compete against an unranked team until Feb. 13.

Bowers claims this early-season gauntlet is in fact a positive, and something she considered when doing the scheduling. Because the qualifying procedure for postseason competition doesn’t depend upon victories but instead on point scoring, Bowers believes facing quality programs can inspire her own team to new heights.

“In gymnastics, winning and losing really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with postseason. If we had a very weak schedule and won every meet, it wouldn’t help us. Instead, we have a tougher schedule, and we’ll rise to the competition and get better scores.”

Which isn’t to say winning some of those meets isn’t a very real goal for the program. Bowers looks at every competition as a chance to walk away with a win, and to reaffirm the UW’s position as a gymnastics powerhouse.

“We’re trying to get back to the national stage,” Bowers said. “By going against these challenging teams, we’ll have a good benchmark. Going against weaker programs won’t help us.”

The intimidation remains, though. When asked to comment on how the Huskies are anticipating such a stacked schedule, Bogart said, “I don’t think that we’re ready to talk about that. I think there’s a lot of question marks.”

Further complicating this is the apparent youth of the Husky squad. The team features no seniors and more freshmen — five — than juniors — four. Yet Bowers pushes past a young team and focuses more on the team itself.

“Twenty-two of the 24 routines that were performed last year were by girls that are back,” Bowers said. “We placed fourth in the region, which is our highest finish in a long time. Even though they’re young, our sophomore and junior classes learned to compete and had leadership roles. With the new freshmen, too, we’re just hoping for good things.”

And, according to Bogart, the hopes will be met.

“The best part about our freshmen is that they do well under pressure,” she said.

Bower’s team-first mentality is echoed in every action at every practice. In fact, the team had sweatshirts printed that read “TEAM / me,” a Rebus puzzle for their mantra, “The team is bigger than me.”

This motto defines the program for this year, and success is only going to come through solid performances across the board.

“We have no superstars on our team,” Bowers said, “but we have a team where everyone is truly talented and has something to offer. If every person does their job, we can be very good. Every single person on the team will need to step up, but we can’t expect a couple of girls to carry the load. For us to be successful, there will be five or six girls getting noticed every meet.”

Expected among those girls are Bogart and fellow juniors Samantha Walior and Kristen Linton. Bowers calls them the “steady Eddies,” referencing their reliability.

Bowers is also counting on a solid input from the sophomore class, headlined by Ruby Engreitz and Hatsune Akaogi.

In a sport often viewed as subjective, the team goals are explicit: Bowers wants to hit 20 of the 24 routines without a significant fall or falter at two-thirds of the meets.

Bowers expects the team to be scoring in the mid-190s by the middle of the season, and she wants to see more consistency from meet to meet. Most importantly, though, are the teams’ end-of-the-season goals. They expect to be ranked in the top 20 in the nation and hope to be one of the top three teams in their conference.

This would require upsetting either UCLA, Stanford or Oregon State, as well as holding off Arizona. In a sport that lacks parity — only four programs have ever won a national title — such lofty expectations are required to meet Bowers’ long-term goal.

“I think, within the next two years, UW will be one of the programs that will be mentioned as a national powerhouse,” she said.

Again, a lesser team might crack under such heady prognostications, but Bowers has been simulating high-pressure situations in practice and focusing on regularity in routines to help increase consistency. Ultimately, though, the greatest asset the team has to help ward off cracking under pressure is the team itself.

“We’ve gotten along really well; we’re really close,” Bogart said. “It’s helped. It’s helped the freshmen adjust easier, and it‘ll help us down the road.”

Reach reporter Zachary Gussin at sports@dailyuw.com.