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Friday, March 29, 2024
<p><span>UF gymnastics coach Rhonda Faehn's freshmen struggled early in the season.</span></p>

UF gymnastics coach Rhonda Faehn's freshmen struggled early in the season.

On Friday night, the O’Connell Center was coated in pink.  

In the seventh annual Link to Pink meet, 8,159 fans — the sixth-largest crowd in program history — came to support breast cancer awareness and blanketed the stands as No. 3 Florida (3-1, SEC 2-1) routed No. 18 Auburn (0-6, SEC 0-3) 197.650-196.025.

“We had some definite benchmarks we wanted to accomplish heading into this meet,” coach Rhonda Faehn said.  

“We wanted to compete aggressively, but we wanted to compete some other athletes and give them experience and then get more stuck landings, and I think we accomplished all three.”

Faehn used a healthy portion of All-America’s Ashanee Dickerson and Marissa King, as well as Bridget Sloan and Kytra Hunter, to string together a 49.525 total vault score — second-highest in the program’s history.

Florida set the school record of 49.65 versus UCLA in March of 2004, the last time a Gator registered a 10.0 vault score (Savannah Evans). Florida’s vault total is the nation’s highest entering the weekend following Alabama’s 49.45.

“We’ve always been strong vaulting,” Sloan said. “UF has always had extremely good vaulting and we’re just kind of keeping that legacy going right now.

“Tonight’s lineup was probably the strongest one we’ve had. I know this is only our fourth meet, but it was definitely a great lineup.”

All-America Marissa King stuck her Tsukahara layout with a full twist to pin a 9.925. It was her first 9.900 vault score recorded this season.

“Marissa [King], she finally put one in which was great because the first couple of meets it was just a matter of getting use to doing it again [vault] in competition season.”

“Now she’s really starting to zero in on where the landing is.

Sophomore Kytra Hunter rounded out the vault rotation with a near-perfect 9.975 exercise. Competing in all-around for the second time thus far, Hunter posted a 39.70 to win the evening’s title.

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Faehn has taken notice in her production.

“She’s a machine,” Faehn said. “It’s just automatic for her. She’s so focused and again, very aggressive.”

UF gymnastics coach Rhonda Faehn's freshmen struggled early in the season.

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