The Utah gymnast Baely Rowe competing on the beam in a meet against Stanford last Saturday at the Huntsman Center. It drew more than 15,000 spectators.”
SALT LAKE CITY — Squeezed into the dizzying choreography of a gymnastics meet at the University of Utah on Saturday night came an unplanned plea over the public-address system. It said it all.
It came shortly after fraternity and sorority members competed in a handstand contest on the arena floor (the winning female student might still be upside down if not toppled by the mascot) and after the giant video board became “Simba Cam,” as audience members held babies aloft and presented them, as in “The Lion King.”
And it came just before a Utah gymnast named Georgia Dabritz — whose pose adorned a wall decal handed out to the first 2,500 fans — scored a perfect 10 on the uneven bars, sending the sellout crowd into a clamorous cheer.
As excitement ebbed, the voice from the sound system asked that those seated in the upper bowl scoot together tightly to accommodate everyone trying to get in.
“That’s a nice problem to have,” the meet director Anne Marie Jensen said as thousands shuffled in the upper deck.
Utah’s Huntsman Center holds 15,000. But more than that were squeezing in to watch what was, on the schedule, just an ordinary conference dual meet with Stanford. The standing-room-only attendance was announced at 15,202.
The night after the gymnastics meet, Utah’s women’s basketball team played No. 7 Oregon State in the same arena. Official attendance was 788.
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Still, there are only 61 Division I programs, and the number has barely budged for a decade. When universities want to add a women’s sport, they look for bigger rosters, less overhead, or both — sports like crew, golf and lacrosse.
“If Greg and Sarah and I could stand up and speak to everybody who is a decision-maker at other schools, I think we could convince them to add gymnastics,” said Yoculan, who retired from Georgia in 2009. Utah gymnastics, with a $750,000 budget, breaks even, the university said, thanks mostly to arena revenues from its meets and booster contributions that cover the 12 scholarships.
“I’ve always been motivated by fear,” Marsden said. “Fear of not being successful. Fear of not being relevant. Fear of the crowds going away.”
The next night, more than 15,000 people watched Utah record one of the best team scores in school history. The night featured noise and perfect scores and optimism for another national title.
There was room to watch. Everyone just had to scoot over a little.
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified a gymnast warming up with Greg Marsden, the coach of the Utah women’s team. She is Georgia Dabritz, not Tory Wilson.
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