Missouri continued its trend of breaking records this season by scoring the most points at the Southeastern Conference Championships in program history, 197.000, to finish sixth in the conference.
Despite the Tigers’ efforts, reigning SEC champion Florida won the SEC Championships for the second consecutive year with a score of 198.425.
The championships were split into two sessions, with the top four teams going after the bottom four. As the No. 7 seed, Missouri competed in the first session against Auburn, Arkansas and Georgia. The final session consisted of Florida, Alabama, LSU and Kentucky.
Missouri got to choose whether it started the meet with the beam or floor event. With the 12th-best average in the country on beam, that’s where the Tigers elected to begin their campaign for the SEC title.
Early in the rotation, MU sophomore Grace Anne Davis stumbled and posted a low score, but MU coach Shannon Welker wasn’t worried.
“Anybody would lie to you if they told you they don’t get nervous after a fall,” Welker told SEC Network’s Samantha Peszek. “But I had a lot of confidence in the young ladies going after that and they did a great job.”
Strong beam routines from Helen Hu and Sienna Schreiber were enough to bring the Tigers’ beam event score up to 49.375 and give them the lead after one rotation.
Missouri maintained its razor-thin lead after earning 49.325 points for its floor routines. Alisa Sheremeta and Jocelyn Moore both scored 9.9s to make up the team’s top scores.
Several stumbles on vault landings led to significant deductions for the Tigers. Auburn narrowly stole the lead from Missouri heading into the final rotation.
Despite posting one of its best team bar scores of the season, Missouri was unable to regain the lead over Auburn. By a score of 197.100-197.000, Auburn narrowly defeated Missouri to be the top team in the first session.
The first session win for Auburn came despite the absence of sophomore and Olympic gold medalist Sunisa Lee, who did not compete due to what an Auburn news release called a “non-gymnastics health issue” that has kept her sidelined for the past three weeks.
The Tigers now eagerly wait for their NCAA Regional competition placement to be announced Monday. There are regionals in Los Angeles, Denver, Pittsburgh and Norman, Oklahoma, and they last from March 29-April 2.
Each regional competition consists of nine teams and other individual competitors. Automatic berths to the national championships are reserved for each regional’s top two teams, the best all-around gymnasts and the highest-scoring gymnast in each event who is not already on an advancing team.
Last year, Missouri finished fifth in the nation at the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships.