“Does everyone have your leo?” Someone says as the Scarlet Knights prepare to board the bus, while freshmen in charge of various pieces of equipment—the springboard and the bar scraper, which is in truth just a car snow brush, as well as recovery devices—haul them toward the bus. “Does everyone have their grips?”
It’s a call that happens every time the team heads out to an away meet after one gymnast forgot to pack her leotard in 2020. It’s just one measure of insurance among many to be sure everything and everyone gets to the destination.
The Rutgers roster is large, coming in at 27 gymnasts, and simply by geography the New Jersey-based Scarlet Knights have to travel farther distances than many other teams in the conference, since the rest of the Big Ten is mostly scattered around the Midwest.
Head coach Umme Salim-Beasley doesn’t mind the travel, though, since historically her team has scored well on the road. She doesn’t have much control over the schedule, either, since the conference office handles the six in-conference meets—five head-to-head duals and the Big Five competition—which only leaves a handful of regular season weekends for other contests.
Salim-Beasley likes to get her team outside of the Northeast, and she looks for friendly…
