BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Azusa Pacific won all but two heats in a convincing road win over King (Tenn.) Wednesday evening, posting a season-best team score of 278.265 behind new season-best scores in three of the six events in the meet.
The Cougars won by a margin of nearly 15 points over King, which surpassed 260 points for the first time since 2017 and is currently in its sixth year competing in acrobatics and tumbling.
With the win, Azusa Pacific improves to 3-0 on the year, while King drops its second straight meet to fall to 3-2.
What It Means: Azusa Pacific continues its hot start, improving to 3-0 to start the season for the second straight year and only the second time in program history. Last year, Azusa Pacific won four straight to start before finishing with a 5-1 regular season mark.
How It Happened: The Cougars won all six events, starting with a 1.65-point advantage after the compulsory event. The only event King stayed within a point of Azusa Pacific was the acro event, which was a margin of six-tenths of a point. The Cougars extended the lead in the pyramid event by a 1.55-point margin and in the toss event by another 2.10 points.
King tied Azusa Pacific in the compulsory toss heat and posted its only heat victory of the night in the aerial solo tumbling pass. However, the Cougars still extended their lead by an additional 3.10 points in the tumbling event before registering a season-high score of 97.54 in the team event. That pushed the final margin another 5.75 points in Azusa Pacific's favor for the final winning margin of 14.75 points.
Top Performances: Redshirt freshman Gabby Spencer posted the best solo tumbling score so far this year when she scored a 9.925 in the open tumbling pass, edging her previous season-best by 25-thousandths of a point. Sophomore Jessica Gill added a score of 9.85 in her first chance at the aerial solo tumbling pass this season, and the Cougars finished with nine heat scores of 9.75 or better (out of 10 possible points).
Azusa Pacific also tied or set season-high scores in nine separate heats: compulsory toss (9.75), six-element acro (9.85), seven-element acro (9.90), synchronized pyramid (9.85), open pyramid (9.90), open toss (9.75), quad tumbling (8.90), along with Gill's 9.85 in aerial tumbling and Spencer's 9.925 in open tumbling. The Cougars increased the start value of the team event by nearly a point (0.99), then executed at the higher value with a season-high score of 97.54, an improvement of 1.5 points over the last time out.
Gill was involved in four of those season-best performances (six-element acro, open pyramid, quad tumbling, and aerial tumbling), and Carolina Phillips, Kara Ingersoll, Katrina Gonzales, and Hannah Alonzo each competed in three of the heats which posted season-best scores.
What's Next: Azusa Pacific competes for the third consecutive week with a return home to face No. 2-ranked Oregon on Tuesday, March 12, at 7:00 p.m.
