The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I thought I would post this due to the unique nature of this years team. After they peaked in 2011 and finished 12th in the country with two of the better all around gymnasts in Kent history (Christina Lenny and Marie Case) they have slowly declined. They finished 6th in the MAC in 2018 and 4th in 2019. They haven’t had an all arounder of note for a few years. Some very good gymnasts but nobody that could compete in all four events. This year they recruited 3 freshman Karlie Frank, Olivia Amodei and Rachel DeCavitch who have already competed as all arounders. DeCavitch and Frank in both meets to date and Amodei in one of the two. Today they finished 1,2,3 in a quad meet at George Washington. Also competing were Cornell and Penn. I watched them compete in a home meet against NIU and they appear to be the real deal. They had two bad routines on bars that day but 2/11 is pretty good for your first meet at home in front of a 1000 or so people. They were 12 for 12 today on the road. The team scored 195.325 which is pretty good for the second meet of the year. It will be interesting to see how we do over the next four years. Now if we can just get the wrestling team back on it’s feet.

I’m out of date with this one but I find it interesting. The 20+ gymnastics coach at Central Michigan (a program just as successful as Kents if not more so) was fired last spring for telling his athletes to hide concussion symptoms from the medical staff. His long time assistant was promoted to take over the program. Sounds a little fishy to me. Wouldn’t she have known who was having concussion like symptoms too??? Competition sure brings out the best and worst in people. I can’t imagine that MAC level gymnastics would warrant covering up medical conditions but it obviously did for this guy.

Ironically I once saw this coach call out a Kent football player for yelling at one of his gymnasts while on the balance beam. He said she could lose concentration and might hurt herself. Oh well!!

Just an update. Instead of watching our beloved men’s basketball team last night I went to the gymnastics meet (I wish there was one on Tuesday to save me). The freshmen continue to impress but being freshmen there have been some bad meets. Last night they did well getting there second highest score of the season. One fall on the beam (a freshman of course, she scored 9.3 even with the automatic 0.5 point deduction so the routine was great otherwise) kept us from getting almost to 196.000 (a 9.8 average which is a good and attainable goal for MAC schools). Prior to the meet they were ranked 41st with 36 teams making the NCAA they are on the bubble. They have 3 more meets to gain some ground. They have rarely missed two years in a row but it’s possible if they don’t pick it up.

Nice article by Allen Moff in Record Courier (picked up by ABJ also) about gymnast Abby Fletcher and pitcher Collin Romel and their recovery from a bad auto accident in April 2019. It will be a three part story.