Oregon State’s rookies ready for the next step at NCAAs

By Kevin Hampton
Corvallis Gazette-Times

Tasha Smith has never seen the NCAA Championships live or on television.

For that matter, Smith had never experienced the Pacific-10 Championships or any big college gymnastics meet before the last few weeks.

Jami Lanz has caught the nationals on TV once or twice, but is looking forward to getting the full impression of being on the floor for the meet.

As freshmen at Oregon State, Lanz and Smith might be new to this college thing, but they have provided a big spark in getting the Beavers to the NCAA Championships on April 20-22.

Smith is in the midst of a strong finish to her season after struggling with injuries. She was second in the all-around at the NCAA West Region meet with a 39.375 after scoring a 9.875 on floor, a 9.850 on bars and 9.825s on vault and beam.

She had a 9.900 on vault and a 9.950 on floor at the Salbasgeon Suites Invitational on March 17 and a 9.925 on vault and 9.950 on floor with an all-around score of 39.050 at the Pac-10 meet.

Lanz has been a consistent all-around performer for the Beavers, with her high score of 39.525 coming at the Salbasgeon Suites meet and following up with a 39.350 at the Pac-10s. A slip on beam dropped her to fifth at the regional with a 38.650.

Lanz and Smith have competed with a drive to win that often has to be instilled in first-year team members.

“They’re very aggressive athletes and very competitive,” OSU coach Tanya Chaplin said. “They want to go out there and they want to win and they fight for everything and I think that has brought a tremendous amount to our team because when you watch the younger ones fighting that hard for everything, I think it kind of moves on up the chain.”

The injuries were tough for Smith, who recognized her role was to be on the floor competing.

“People counted on me a lot for all-around, and then I got hurt so many times that sitting out and watching them kind of struggle at the pink meet was really hard because I wanted to be able to add my scores and help but I couldn’t,” Smith said. “Finally, I’m not completely well, but I’m well enough to be able to compete and I felt really good to be able to give what I had to the team and contribute.”

Smith said the Pac-10 and NCAA Regional meets were a lot of fun and nothing like she had done in eight years of gymnastics.

She expects the national meet to be even bigger and said the Beavers have a good chance to do well.

“We made it to nationals and we proved to ourselves that we could beat Stanford, who had won the Pac-10s, and we turned around and beat them the next weekend,” Smith said. “I feel like we can make it to Super Six.”

Smith’s first impression of Lanz came at a club gymnastics meet where she thought Lanz was a little nervous before her events.

Smith said Lanz has come a long way since she arrived at OSU.

“Now she looks likes she’s relaxing,” Smith said. “When she’s having fun, I’m having fun. At the meets, if she looks like she’s starting to get nervous, I’m like, ‘Jami, calm down.’ And she’s like, ‘Right.’ She just gets it done.”

Lanz enjoys having Smith as a teammate because she is always joking around and bringing energy to practice.

The gymnasts are competitive in the gym and push each other and their other teammates to get better.

“She’s an amazing gymnast,” Lanz said. “(Our) styles are different but she’s an awesome, powerful gymnast and she’s gotten even that much better here, so I think the next three years she’ll even improve more.”

For Lanz, the biggest adjustment was going from competing as an individual at club and Junior Olympics meets to fitting in with a team.

She didn’t have the camaraderie that a team brings.

“In (Junior Olympics), it was a lot of fun, but I never knew how much fun it would be to be on a big team with 15 girls helping each other through everything,” she said. “It’s just a lot of fun. In JOs you’re singled out, it’s just you competing for an individual title. Here it’s for the whole team and that makes it that much more special.”