AZUSA, Calif. -- Azusa Pacific pulled off an improbable come-from-behind upset victory over Hawaii Pacific Thursday afternoon, surging late to a score of 272.735 points in front of a supportive home crowd to edge HPU, which dominated the first half of the meet while scoring 271.095 points in the quarterfinals of the 2017 National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association (NCATA) National Championships.
Not much went right for Azusa Pacific early on, but the finish was all that mattered for the No. 4-seeded Cougars, who pounced on a rare HPU misstep to climb back into the meet after the No. 5-seeded Sharks won the first nine heats of the competition and took a lead of 2.85 points into the final two events of the meet.
A missed landing in Hawai'i Pacific's tumbling trio pass opened up a tiny crack in the Sharks' commanding lead to that point, and the Cougars gained confidence with each ensuing tumbling pass. Ashleigh Pitts provided exactly the lift Azusa Pacific needed, sticking the landing with style at the conclusion of her aerial tumbling pass. In a matter of just three tumbling heats, the Cougars had slashed 2.175 points off HPU's dwindling lead heading into two more solo tumbling passes and the always-unpredictable team event.
"Going into that pass I was a little bit nervous, but I knew what I had to do," Pitts said. "Throughout the meet I had been trying to feed off my teammates' energy and joy, which I haven't done very well in our last few meets. I just had to relax and let everything go, and when I finished it, I knew we had the meet."
Courtney Moser and Heather Hovander delivered solid performances, scoring 9.700 and 9.725 points, respectively. The Sharks regained their footing, scoring 9.825 and 9.875 points in the final two tumbling heats, but the damage was done at that point as HPU's lead was cut to nine-tenths of a point heading into the team event.
"It was really difficult in the moment when our compulsories didn't go the way we wanted," said senior Kalani Aguigui. "We're a team which relies on each other a lot and feeds off each other, so when the opportunity arose, we went for it hard. I tried to keep encouraging everybody to keep attacking that moment and have a great time doing what we love to do."
Azusa Pacific rode its wave of momentum from the Cougars' rally in tumbling to a team event free from major errors, and the score of 95.11 points provided more than enough cushion to surpass Hawaii Pacific after the Sharks posted a score of 92.57 in the team event. After falling to HPU in last year's quarterfinals before dropping both of this year's regular-season matchups to the Sharks by margins of less than a point, the Cougars erupted in celebration upon seeing the late rally result in victory.
"Each meet with Hawai'i Pacific was so close all season, and I think that challenged everyone on the team," Azusa Pacific head coach Colleen Kausrud said. "That pushed us throughout our practices all season, because it showed us how the little things all matter. Our focus all year was on those little things that can wind up changing the score at the end."
With the win, the No. 4-seeded Cougars improve to 3-4 on the year and advance to a Friday night semifinal clash with No. 1-seeded Oregon, which will be a rematch of the 2014 NCATA championship finals, which also took place in the Felix Event Center. Hawai'i Pacific finishes the year with a 6-2 record.
Azusa Pacific is one of only three programs which have advanced to the national semifinals five times in the past six years, and the Cougars improve to 3-1 in the national quarterfinals since the championship field expanded to at least eight teams in 2014.
