Weekly Release No. 3

THIS WEEK
Friday, Jan. 22 - at BYU w/Boise State, 6 p.m.

LAST WEEK
Friday, Jan. 15 - SEATTLE PACIFIC/BOISE STATE (2nd, 194.325)

NOTES
TO RECAP: UC Davis (2-4) scored a 194.325 in Friday's meet with visiting Boise State (195.700) and Seattle Pacific (189.900), the second-highest home opener in program history... The 2015 Aggies scored 194.350 at the NorCal Classic... The attendance of 1,277 is the largest by a UC Davis women's team in 2015-16, trailing only the 2,498 announced for women's basketball the night before... However, Thursday's hoop crowd was part of a doubleheader... For a stand-alone women's event, Friday's meet surpassed the Aggie volleyball season finale on Nov. 24 (1,068) for the school-year best.

HONORARY ASSISTANT COACHES: Head coach John Lavallee continues his tradition of inviting campus dignitaries to serve as honorary assistant coaches at home meets... Dr. Adela de la Torre, formerly a professor with the Chicano(a) studies department and currently the Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs/Campus Diversity, joined ASUCD President Mariah Watson in that role Friday night...

Led by a first-place 9.850 by senior co-captain Stephanie Stamates, the Aggie beam squad posted a 49.025 - t4th in school history... It also marks just the second time UC Davis has broken the 49-point barrier in a January meet, along with the 49.125 compiled in the Jan. 31 home dual with Sacramento State... Katy Nogaki, Kara Jones and Alexis Brown also added 9.800 while Rachel Kreager was close behind at 9.775... Brown amassed the highest overall total for UC Davis, which has not fielded an all-arounder this year... She scored 9.700 on both vault and bars en route to a 29.200 three-event total... Jones scored 9.675 on vault, 9.600 on floor for 29.075 toward the team score.

Nogaki also led UC Davis on vault with a 9.750, senior Dani Judal (9.800) and junior Yonni Michovska (9.775) paced the bars crew, and freshman Yasmine Yektaparast went 9.800 to lead the floor team... Sophomores Miranda Holder (9.775) and Amanda Presswood (9.750) also scored well on floor to help toward a team 48.600 in the event.

RANKINGS: UC Davis sits 42nd in the nation in total average, as compiled by RoadToNationals.com... Of course, this is based on an insignificant sample size, with many schools having only competed in one meet... Nonetheless, Brown's back-to-back beam scores of 9.825 and 9.800 has her tied for fourth in the West, matching Cal's Jessica Howe and UCLA's Mikaela Gerber and Sonya Meraz.

UP NEXT: The Aggies meet up with Boise State for a second straight weekend, this time in a triangular at BYU's Smith Fieldhouse... The Cougars sit one spot ahead of UC Davis in the national rankings with a 193.713 two-meet mean... The Broncos, which checked in at No. 19 in the preseason poll, opened at RTN in 13th (195.700)... Brigham Young streams its home gymnastics home meets at BYUtv, with home meets on StatBroadcast.com... Check back to ucdavisaggies.com for links later in the week.

BYU (0-2) opened with a 193.850 at Utah then followed with a 193.575 on the road at Central Michigan last weekend... Sophomore Mackenzie Douglas tied for the vault win at 9.775 while senior Makenzie Haliday finished T3rd on vault (9.750) and T2nd on beam (9.800)... Haliday, formerly Makenzie Johnson, is a returning All-MRGC all-arounder... Jill Van Mierlo, last year's MRGC Freshman of the Year, scored 38.825 in the all-around on Friday... BOISE STATE (2-0) led the MRGC weekly awards, with senior Krystine Jacobsen and Sandra Collantes winning Gymnast fo the Week and Specialist of the Week, respectively... Jacobsen won on bars (9.875) and all-around (39.125) on Friday, while Collantes took down floor exercise with a career-best 9.900.

HEAD COACH JOHN LAVALLEE:
"We talk a lot about the inverted-U hypothesis. If you're too jacked up, your performance drops off. If you don't get yourself jacked up enough, your performance drops off. And that changes every week. So finding that spot where you have the right amount of energy is a piece of the puzzle that helps you perform at your highest level. When we came in for warmups, we had to slow down and take a deep breath. Everyone was really fired up. By the time the meet came around, we had done a really good job at getting into the right place, physically, mentally and emotionally."

"We're still figuring things out. On uneven bars, we have a lot of little technical things that we have to clean up. A lot of tenths in execution. It will take a few weeks for this lineup to have the experience to perform at that level. We have people who haven't been in that many meets. We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores, plus some folks with some new skills. And it will take them a couple of weeks to get into the groove and feel comfortable at maxing out their routines. They did an excellent job on Friday at getting through and staying on their feet."

"BYU is two tenths ahead of us at No. 41. So we have an excellent test this weekend with a team that's evenly matched. My hope is to increase our performance all the way around the gym. We had a great meet on beam but by no means are we 'there.' We did it once, which is nice, but the reality is that we have to have seven or eight of those over the course of the year. And we have to be able to do that in all four events. We have quite a bit of work to go."