LSU was falling apart on bars and beam, Missouri was being its consistent self, Iowa was looking ready to pounce and Hallie Copperwheat was getting set to compete on her best events. While Copperwheat was competing at her first regionals in Raleigh, she was thinking about was her teammates back in Pittsburgh, wishing that they were there with her. Yes, she had the gymnasts from LSU cheering her on, but it wasn’t the same. Without them there it was still an “invaluable experience” being able to compete alongside the other teams, and it was a motivation going into 2023.
In less than four months, nine teams will come to Pittsburgh with the hopes of qualifying to the national championships two weeks later. Since the top-36 regionals format started, a host has never failed to qualify a full team. Pittsburgh is hoping that the trend will continue in 2023 and make it back to regionals for the first time since 2018.
Going into the 2022 season, Pittsburgh was hoping to make that leap from bubble team to regional qualifier. It had a large freshmen class coming in to add much-needed depth on all four events. While the Panthers fell short of that goal, the team still managed to have a successful season. Like many teams in 2022, Pittsburgh broke the program record team…
