AZUSA, Calif. -- Azusa Pacific completed a season sweep over the first-year program from Arizona Christian in the No. 4-ranked Cougars' home opener Tuesday night, improving by nearly four points from its season-opening effort at Arizona Christian three weeks ago.
The Cougars scored 277.015, while Arizona Christian registered 249.170 points, and Azusa Pacific won all 20 heats in the meet while registering improvements over the season-opening score in 10 of the 20 heats of the competition.
With the win, Azusa Pacific improves to 2-0 on the year, while Arizona Christian falls to 0-3.
What It Means: Azusa Pacific is 2-0 to start the season for the second straight year, repeating the history made a year ago when the Cougars recorded the first 2-0 start in program history. Last year, Azusa Pacific won four in a row to start a 5-1 regular season before advancing to the NCATA National Championship semifinals for the third time in the past four seasons.
How It Happened: The Cougars were better than the season opener in all four heats of the compulsory event and two of the three heats in the acro event. That included an event-best score of 9.85 from Isabella Schmitt and Hannah Alonzo in the five-element acro, as well as a meet-best score of 9.95 in the compulsory toss.
Azusa Pacific built a 7.9-point halftime margin and extended the lead by another 1.1 points in the toss event before moving into tumbling. Freshman Gabby Spencer finished off tumbling with a score of 9.90 in the open solo tumbling pass, as all three solo passes scored 9.80 or higher to send the Cougars into the team event with a commanding lead of 14.375 points.
Top Performances: The Cougars scored 9.65 points or better (out of 10 possible points) in 11 heats, including six heat scores of 9.80 or better. The best heat score of the meet was the 9.95 in the compulsory toss, while Schmitt and Alonzo scored 9.85 in the five-element acro. The compulsory pyramid was also a leading scorer, registering 9.80 as all four compulsory heats showed improvements of 15-hundredths or better.
Courtney Moser recorded the first of three outstanding solo tumbling passes, scoring 9.800 in the aerial tumbling solo pass. Sophomore Beth Magee followed with a 9.825 in the six-element tumbling solo pass before Spencer wrapped up the tumbling event with a season-high tumbling score of 9.900.
The team event registered a 1.34-point improvement from three weeks earlier, scoring 96.040 despite beginning with a start value of 46-hundredths lower than the season-opening effort.
What's Next: Azusa Pacific is back in action each of the next two weeks, visiting No. 10 King (Tenn.) University on Wednesday, March 6, before returning home to take on No. 2 Oregon on Tuesday, March 12.
Quotable: "We came into tonight's meet wanting to beat our score from our last meet in Arizona, and we did that. We always want to increase our start value in the team event and tumbling if we can, but we weren't able to do that as much as we would have liked for this meet due to some injuries. Everybody stepped up and did a little extra tumbling to really make up that difference in the start values." -- Head coach Colleen Kausrud
"The whole first half was the strongest I've seen in terms of being confident and solid, so that was a big plus to start that way. Tumbling heats were really solid, and we put in some new competitors that helped give us some depth in our soloists and create opportunities to get more people involved." -- Kausrud
"This is probably the most confidence I've had coming into a meet, and that made this meet a lot of fun. I like competing against a team for a second time, especially when we can add our home-court advantage with such amazing support from friends and family. It was really exciting to execute the five-element acro with Hannah (Alonzo) the way we've been practicing." -- sophomore Isabella Schmitt
