Utah has something special in Ella Zirbes, Camie Winger and Elizabeth Gantner

There isn’t a shortage of talented gymnasts at the University of Utah.

Go down the Red Rocks’ 14-woman roster and you’ll find Olympic medalists, NCAA champions, All-Americans, Junior Olympic champions, state champions, etc.

Gymnasts like Maile O’Keefe, Grace McCallum, Jaedyn Rucker, Abby Paulson and Amelie Morgan, all of whom are household names at this point, or close to it.

Ranked No. 5 in the country, the Utah gymnastics team has relied heavily on each of these gymnasts as it attempts to compete for championships this season — a final Pac-12 conference championship and an ever-elusive 10th national title (NCAA).

And evidenced by their successful careers, each of the aforementioned gymnasts has come through for Utah in the biggest moments. There is a reason O’Keefe is the reigning NCAA all-around champion, Rucker a former NCAA vault champion, McCallum and Morgan Olympic medalists. Each has proven consistently great, particularly in the biggest competitions.

More and more, though, Utah’s title-winning aspirations will fall at the feet of three freshmen.

Ella Zirbes, Camie Winger and Elizabeth Gantner are as decorated as any Utah gymnast. Each was rated a five-star prospect by College Gym News ahead of their signing with Utah and each has competed for championships prior to their arrival at Utah. Zirbes has won national titles, and Gantner, too, with Winger finishing as a national runner-up on multiple occasions.

The three have talent to spare.

“They are all very competitive, they are all ready to compete, they are all fighting for lineups spots,” Paulson said. “(They are) big names in their own sense, and have their own titles to back them up.”

If the last month is any indication, they are going to dictate how far Utah goes this postseason.

In Utah’s highest-scoring meets this year — the ones that have demonstrated the Red Rocks are at or near the level of national title contenders like Oklahoma, Cal, LSU and Florida — Zirbes, Winger and Gantner have been key contributors.

Against Stanford — when Utah recorded a season-high 198.075 — the trio combined for four scores of 9.9 or better, across three events (floor exercise, uneven bars and vault). In last weekend’s loss at Cal, in which the Red Rocks proved capable of competing near the level of the Bears without Morgan and with a diminished Makenna Smith, the three freshmen racked up five scores of 9.85 or better, including two scores at or above a 9.9.

In Utah’s highest-scoring road performance this season, at Washington, the trio contributed four scores of 9.85 or better.

By comparison, against UCLA, one of Utah’s lowest-scoring competitions of the year and by far the lowest-scoring meet of the last month, the freshmen combined for just one score better than a 9.80, while competing five routines in total.

Utah has taken a clear step forward during the last month — even though the team still has significant room for improvement — and most of it can be traced to Zirbes, Winger and Gantner starting to figure things out while taking on larger roles.

Zirbes, specifically, has taken a star turn. There is an argument to be made that she is already one of the most valuable gymnasts on the team. She is now competing on three events while regularly scoring in the high 9.8 range but more frequently in the 9.9 range.

“She is obviously coming into her own as a gymnast and really enjoying the process,” Utah coach Carly Dockendorf said.

And Zirbes has expectations that she’ll get even better.

“I definitely have had a lot of expectations on myself just because this is such a historic program and we have had so much success,” she said, before noting that all-around ambitions will have to wait until next year.

“Beam will be a next-year goal since we have such a good beam lineup,” she said.

Winger has been the ultimate plug-and-play gymnast. Against Cal, Dockendorf needed someone to fill in for an injured Smith and she turned to Winger and the freshman didn’t disappoint with a key 9.85 to lead off the beam rotation.

Winger has also demonstrated that she can lead off Utah’s vault rotation with some of the team’s best scores. She has scored a 9.95 on vault twice as Utah’s leadoff and that is the highest score by any Red Rock on vault this year, except for Rucker (a 9.975 against Oregon State).

“Nothing seems to phase her,” Dockendorf said. “I think that you can see she (Winger) is just a really strong competitor. What she does in the gym builds her confidence and that of the team and the staff. I think she knows what Utah gymnastics stands for and that excites her. It is a big deal to be a part of this team and she embraces that competitiveness. She likes that it is a legendary program and all the pressures that come with that.”

Then there’s Gantner, who has become a regular in the Red Rocks’ beam lineup and flashed real potential. Of the three freshmen, she has been the least consistent thus far, but she is an integral part of Utah’s beam rotation now. In fact, Gantner is more important than ever with Morgan gone until the Pac-12 championships while she tries to earn the right to represent Great Britain at the Paris Olympics this summer.

The expectations of competing in Utah’s vaunted beam lineup, filling the hole left by Morgan, haven’t phased Gantner. Utah made sure of that.

“I’ve always been my own worst critic,” she said. “And I had very high expectations before I got (to Utah). Just knowing all of the talent we have here, all of the accomplishments. But as soon as I got here everyone reinforced the idea that we were all brought here for a reason and we are all capable of carrying on that legacy. Just by doing our gymnastics that we know how to do.”

No one should expect Zirbes, Winger or Gantner to become the best gymnasts on Utah’s team this season. There are enough storied upperclassmen around to shoulder the weight of those expectations. But Utah’s ceiling as a team may well be determined by the efforts of the freshmen trio.

Can they propel Utah to great heights — another trip to nationals and another berth in the Final Four (otherwise known as the Four on the Floor)?

Time will tell, but there is precedent. In 2020, O’Keefe and Paulson weren’t the best Utah had, not with Kim Tessen having a breakout senior season, but as true freshmen they helped Utah avoid a rebuild and instead had the team positioned as one of the best in the country before everything was unceremoniously cut short by the pandemic. If not for the pandemic, odds were that those Red Rocks would have made noise during the postseason. Things were trending that way.

Paulson noted that Zirbes, Winger and Gantner do remind her a little bit of herself and O’Keefe as freshmen. On the competition floor at least.

“They do a little bit gymnastics-wise,” she said.

And like every Utah gymnast before them, they won’t be afraid of shouldering expectations. They are Red Rocks, after all.

“There are a lot of expectations to being a Utah gymnast,” Dockendorf said. “You aren’t just any gymnast. You are part of a legendary program. Everyone expects you to succeed. ... But something we’ve focused a lot on is that gymnastics is something that you do, not who you are.

“If you can separate that, when you do a vault and you don’t like the score, that is not an evaluation of who are you are as a person, just an evaluation of the vault that you did. When they can start to understand that and truly believe that separation, then they are able to go out and perform free. Free of doubt, free of expectation and that is really when you see the trajectory go up with their performance.”