BRIDGEPORT, Conn. – Four Ladies Gymnasts, senior Navia Jordan, junior Cami Bea Austin, and freshmen Xian Baumgartner and Kendall Sanders, will compete at the annual USA Gymnastics (USAG) Championships during session one of the team semifinals and all-around finals Friday afternoon, April 12, at the University of Bridgeport. The session, the first of two, is set to begin at 1 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT).
CHAMPIONSHIP WEB SITE (Links will be available on Friday, April 12)
For Centenary, Sanders will compete in the all-around, while Austin will compete on vault, beam, and floor. Jordan will compete on both beam and floor and Baumgartner will perform on bars.
Senior Tavia Smith also qualified for the all-around but will be unable to compete. Smith qualified for the USAG Championships her sophomore and junior seasons, receiving First Team All-American honors in the all-around in 2018 after receiving a career high total of 38.750. She also received career highs on bars and floor (9.725) and beam (9.800) during the competition in 2018.
Jordan will conclude her Ladies Gymnastics career as a four-time USAG qualifier on floor. However, this will be the first time since her freshman season she has qualified for the Championships on beam. Last season, she received First Team All-American honors on floor after finishing runner-up with a 9.875 in event finals. She also received First Team All-American accolades on floor in 2016 after posting a 9.900 – the highest score on the event by a Ladies Gymnast in a decade.
Jordan finished the season with an RQS of 9.790 on beam and 9.815 on floor, the highest total of all individual qualifiers for USAGs on both events.
This will be the third-straight season Austin has competed at the USAG Championships, competing on vault and floor in 2017 and on vault in 2018. In 2019, her vault RQS of 9.775 was the highest among individual qualifiers for the championships.
Baumgartner finished the season with the second-highest bars RQS for the Ladies - a tenth behind Smith. Sanders becomes the first Centenary freshman gymnast to qualify in the all-around in the USAG Championships since Ashley White in 2015.
There will be two sessions on Friday with eight teams competing at the USAG Championships. The first session features Lindenwood, Yale, Air Force, and West Chester. Session two sees UIC, Bridgeport, Texas Woman's, and Cornell competiting. The top two teams of each session advance to the team finals on Saturday night.
The top-10 individual gymnasts on each event after both sessions are completed on Friday will be named First Team All-Americans and will qualify for the event finals Sunday afternoon.
All Centenary gymnasts will rotate with Yale except for Jordan, who will compete on beam and floor with Lindenwood. The Bulldogs begin the meet on bars while the Lions compete on beam in the third and fourth rotations. During the first rotation, Sanders and Baumgartner will compete on bars. The second rotation features Sanders and Austin on beam while the third rotation will see Jordan on beam and Sanders and Austin on floor. The final rotation sees Sanders and Austin on vault and Jordan on floor.