LOGAN — It’s an exciting time in USU Athletics with the Men’s Basketball team back in the Big Dance, also Aggie Gymnastics is going to be hosting the inaugural 2024 Mountain West Conference Championships this Saturday night at 7p.m. in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
Joining Utah State will be league members Air Force, Boise State and San Jose State.
On KVNU’s For the People program last week, Aggie head coach Kristin White explained why this is the first conference championship in the sport.
“All four schools are incredibly grateful for the Mountain West to pick up gymnastics, it’s a really great opportunity for our student-athletes, and quite honestly, for our university and our fans. We’ve been one of the sports that hasn’t been involved in the Mountain West in prior years and our conference was in a sense, kind of a made up conference for some of the gymnastics schools, so that we could have championships and keep going into the post-season,” she explained.
White, in her second year as coach for the team, talked about why they needed to make this move now.
“Over (last)summer, a lot of us had been trying to get in with the Mountain West for a year and a half now I think. We knew that our old conference that we were in was only going to have 3 teams left in it because BYU would be moving to the Big 12 (conference) this year. So, our administrators and the administrators at Boise State really got together and were coming up with a plan on how to approach the Mountain West to have gymnastics be officially a part of the conference.”
She said also Air Force and San Jose State jumped in and did a lot of the leg work on speaking with the conference commissioner and others at the conference level to get it approved.
White agreed that if you’ve never been to a gymnastics meet in person, the athletic ability on display can almost seem gravity-defying.
“Yes absolutely. I think that’s one of the unique things about our sport is when you have a first-time fan that comes, they may not quite understand how the sport works, but they’re just mesmerized by what our women can do on the competition floor. It’s exciting, there’s tons of energy, you can see the support amongst all the teammates and the staff while competing. It’s just kind of an electrifying environment.”
Tickets are only $10 for adults and $5 for students and children. You can get more information at UtahStateAggies.com.