In a night of falling off beams from both teams and a bad fall from Utah State on vault, Sacramento State women’s gymnastics defeated the Aggies Friday in the Think Pink meet at the Nest.

Aggies’ freshman Kinzey Martinez took a hard fall that resulted in her withdrawing from the meet as she was taken to the hospital. The fall led to a 193.800-193.400 win for the Hornets.

Utah State came into the meet having only beaten the Hornets one time before.

The Aggies also brought a familiar face back to Sac State in former assistant coach Jamie Donkin.

“Sac State is and always will be a part of me,” Donkin said.

Donkin, who left last season to take the assistant coaching job at Utah State, said she was nervous when she first walked into the gym.

“I definitely have fond memories of Sac State and the time I spent here,” Donkin said.

Although Sac State beat the Aggies, the Hornets had two sides to the meet.

“We had two halves of the meet. The first half we had great vault and bars,” said head coach Kim Hughes “The second half of the meet our beam and floor were good, but we had too many falls to be competitive to qualify for the regional meet in a few weeks.”

The two Hornets that fell on the beam were juniors Kailey Hansen and Elideth Guerrero, and the fall on the floor exercise was committed by sophomore Dallas Smith.

“I was really frustrated when I fell of the beam because it surprised me,” Hansen said.

Hansen was solid in all of her routines, but her vault routine was the best rotation Friday, scoring a 9.800.

Sophomore Kalliah McCartney finished in first place in the all around competition and all season. She has consistently been one of the highest scorers on the team in every event.

McCartney stuck her beam routine with a 9.85 as well as her floor routine and the uneven bars that scored a 9.825.

“One word that describes Kalliah would be consistency,” Hughes said. “She is not really a machine because she is so artistic, but she is always consistent in her rotations,”

The ‘Think Pink’ meet is really special to all of the gymnasts. Hansen and McCartney both said the team was really pumped to do the meet because everyone on the team had someone go through breast cancer.

Sac State will be competing in its next meet at 7 p.m. on March 9 at Oregon State in Corvallis, Oreg.

 

Clifton can be reached on Twitter at @jonesSHsports