A season-worst performance on bars doomed the North Carolina women’s gymnastics team (2-6, 0-2 ACC), who fell to Clemson (3-0, 2-0 ACC), 196.550-194.250, on Friday at Carmichael Arena.
After an injury to junior Lali Dekanoidze in UNC’s last meet, the Tar Heels went into Friday without the gymnast who had posted the team’s highest score on vault and second highest score on bars this season.
On vault, replacing Dekanoidze and sophomore Paige Prejean who had done vault for the past three meets, Elly King and senior Cory Shinohara made their season debuts, notching scores of 9.675 and 9.250 respectively.
Sophomore Kaya Forbes drew the loudest cheers from the crowd and her team as she nabbed UNC’s highest score on vault at 9.850. That gave North Carolina a vault score of 48.750, below their season average of 48.933 and behind Clemson’s mark of 49.150.
Three errors on three different routines tanked UNC’s bars score. Senior Jamie Shearer lost momentum as she swung on the lower bar and had to restart her routine, while first-year Jessica Naranjo faltered as she jumped from the high bar to the low bar and also repeated her routine.
The third error came from sophomore Gwen Fink, who lost grip during a turn on the high bar. Shearer received a 9.150, Naranjo a 9.025 and Fink a 9.250.
Junior Isabelle Schaefer did not let UNC’s struggles get to her, grabbing the meet high and tying her career high for bars at 9.925. But it was not enough to stop North Carolina from posting its lowest bars score of the season, 47.675.
When the Tar Heels circled up ahead of its last two events, beam and floor exercise, junior Julia Knower recalled the coaches telling the gymnasts to keep it simple and not ruminate on past events. Head coach Danna Durante echoed the same sentiments.
“[Bars] was not pretty,” Durante said. “It was not pretty, but it was over. So were we going to carry it to the next event or were we going to leave it in the past and leave it there and move on and get stronger and get better?”
