Saint Louis Sports Today

Saint Louis Sports News Continuously Updated

Olympic Sports Catch Up: First Edition

by


In this new piece, let’s dig into all that’s going on in the world of Mizzou’s non-rev sports!

Welcome to a new weekly column at Rock M Nation, “Olympic Sports Catch Up.” As the Olympic sports manager at this beautiful little website, I lead a team of talented and passionate writers who have a special interest in non-revenue sports at Missouri. Because football & men’s basketball rule the pages of Rock M in terms of readership, I thought I’d try to draw some extra eyeballs over to my side of the internet and the sports that are consuming us these days.

I’ve broken down each of the sports below and will be sharing recent results, fun/relevant info, upcoming matches, and any writings our talented crew has done. If there’s relevant social media posts or MU Tigers news, I’ll share that as well.

Enjoy!

Gymnastics

  • Recent Results: Missouri 196.700 — Ball State 194.925 — Illinois State 194.775 — Southeast Missouri 190.475

My recap is coming soon, but here’s some fun facts from the gym portion of Beauty & the Beast. Mizzou’s 49.40 on bars took them four meets to reach last season. Their 49.10 on beam was higher than five scores last season. On vault last year, Mizzou didn’t score under 49, but twice scored lower than the 48.975 in 2023. Finally, the extremely low-scoring 49.20 on floor was the Tigers’ lowest since the first meet of 2023. I do not expect it to happen again, you guys. Additionally, with the new judging scoring mechanism in place, it appears that during Week 1, judges were asked pretty strict, and Mizzou’s scores are right on par with the best of the country. (Whewwwwwwww.)

Addison Lawrence took her first solo beam title of the season, while Jocelyn Moore tied for top billing on vault with Illinois State’s Alana Laster and with two other Tiger teammates for the co-floor honors. Hannah Horton also picked up a couple event titles, winning the bars and tying with Joci and another Tiger on FX. Amari Celestine was the third Tiger in the top spot on FX while finishing second on bars and winning her first all-around title. Railey Jackson and Helen Hu tied for third on beam.

While I was (literally) running through various airports on Thursday, Mizzou AD Laird Veatch was extending Shannon Welker. Is there someone more deserving of an extension at this point, especially while in the final year of their contract? No, I think not.

In Matthew’s quick-hitter, he spelled out all that Shannon has done to deserve it— one of just seven schools to reach four consecutive NCAA Regional Finals, fifth place finish in 2022, 2022 SEC Coach of the Year, a preseason no. 9 ranking in the 2025 WCGA preseason poll, currently the 11th-ranked freshman class and a top 4 (if not the tippity top) transfer class in the country. and more. So, stay awhile, Shannon. Please.

From the post-meet presser, he said, “Laird showed a great vote of confidence in what we’ve been here as far as building consistency, and we’re excited about it… We’ve built something special here at the University of Missouri gymnastics, and we get to see it through for the next four or five years.”

With this massive amount of depth, it’s possible that we won’t see that many freshmen work their way into lineups this season. And that could be a good thing! Per Shannon, while he does anticipate that the Tigers will have some freshmen who are competitive to make lineups, they’ve had to use some freshmen out of necessity in recent years. The freshmen are expected to take their time a bit and develop a bit more, but he does expect to see some freshmen in lineups.

I shared the above copy because of what we saw at the first meet. Three freshmen made their official debuts on Friday at B&B— Railey on floor & beam, Kaia on vault & exh on bars and floor, and Ayla in exhibition on vault.

In this piece, I wrapped up the Tigers’ final intrasquad meet of the season, While those numbers are not that important now that we have one official meet, it was nice to see just how much depth the coaching staff has at their disposal this year. They showed 50 routines and scored 9.80 or above on 27 of them. This included six 10.0 start value vaults from Hannah, Joci, Amari, Elise, Kaia and Railey, as well as FOUR 9.90 scores on beam from Jessa, Lauren, Helen and Kennedy.

Given the performance of the bars team at Beauty and the Beast, it appears they took coach Whitney Snowden’s thoughts to heart: “I was so incredibly proud of how the Bars squad showed up! We talk a lot about staying calm under pressure and taking each skill one at a time. Bars is an event where rhythm really matters, and if you work against the bounce of the bar, it can make the routine much more challenging. Our Tigers are working to swing bars, and not just use their strength to produce routines.”

  • Next up: The Tigers will travel to Colorado to take on #12 Denver, #14 Georgia, and Long Island University (LIU) at 3pm. You can watch on MidCo Sports Plus (it’s $9.99, I checked), which was formally the Summit League’s streaming service.

Swimming & Diving

Rory and I kinda tag-teamed this recap though she did most of the heavy lifting (I was more the role of researcher with my insane spreadsheets), looking at how the Tigers did against their top 10 opponents, Louisville.

Turns out the 1000 free was by far the Tigers’ best event, with oodles of best times and 15 points on the women’s side alone. The men were also successful, taking first and fourth, while also tallying several season bests all around. How were we so off in our predictions? You’ll have to read to find out!

The recap separates each of the four strokes as well as diving and takes a look at top four finishes as well as best times from the Tigers, while peppering in some quotes from head coach Andrew Grevers that came from the MU Tigers recap.

In Rory’s Louisville look ahead, she made some predictions about where she thought the Tigers could make up some ground on Louisville, who is clearly the superior team on both the men & women’s side. A few races she said to watch: the M/W 100 back, Jan Zubik in the 200 fly, Abbey Taute in the 200 back, freshman Luke Nebrich in the 50 free, and the diving events. Notably, it looked like the 1000 free would be a problem for Mizzou, which ended up being the opposite!

  • Next up: The Tigers return to action on Friday-Saturday, January 17-18 at Mizzou Aquatic Center against Missouri State and Division II McKendree College.

Volleyball

  • Recent News: Congrats to All-American, SEC Newcomer of the Year and AVCA Central Region Player of the Year Mychael Vernon, who signed a professional contract with Akademia Sant’Anna Messina in Italy.

Per the MU Tigers release, Mychael ranked third in the SEC with 504 kills (4.27 kills/set, ninth in the SEC) and 561.5 points (4.76 points/set, ninth in the SEC) in 2024. In the NCAA, she was ranked 24th for total kills and 31st for total points. She finished in double-digits kills in all but two matches this season (29 of 31) along with 13 double-doubles. She registered a career-best 37 kills against Arkansas (Oct. 25) to set a new Mizzou single-match record.

  • Signing Class Spotlight: Paige Felder

Per MU Tigers, Paige Felder, a 6-2 outside hitter from Parowan, Utah, was named Utah 2A Player of the Year each of the past two seasons and helped Parowan High School earn consecutive Utah 2A State Championships (2022, 2023). She recorded 1,705 kills, 866 digs, 252 aces and 183 blocks over her high school career at Parowan and was named to the first-team all-region and the all-region MVP each of the past three seasons.

While this news came out December 23, I’m not sure how many people saw Matthew’s piece, so I’ll share it again here. Luckett was named Second Team All-Atlantic 10 this year after recording 239 kills on a .303 hitting percentage and 138 total blocks. Her 1.16 blocks per set ranked second in the conference, and she was ninth in the A-10 in hitting percentage.

She will join Mizzou after starting her first two collegiate seasons at SLU. She started 28 of 32 matches her freshman year in 2023, totaling 98 blocks and hitting .222 on 150 kills to be named to the A-10’s All-Rookie Team.

After winning an NCAA Tournament game in Year one to advancing to the Sweet 16 this season, Dawn Sullivan is building something special with this program. And she’s having a heck of an offseason as well with the additions via the transfer portal — so stay up to date with Matthew Gustafson’s coverage on this team.

While this is the 11th time the team has been in the AVCA top 25 final rankings, it’s the team’s highest placement since 2016, and the highest ranking in Dawn’s two seasons as head coach.

Women’s Basketball

  • Recent Results: No. 2 South Carolina 83 — Missouri 52 on January 2

Ashton Judd led the Tigers in scoring in the loss with 15 points on 5-11 shooting and 2-3 from three. She was also 3-4 from the charity stripe and pulled in a team-high 6 rebounds in 32 minutes. Grace Slaughter had 13 points on 5-14 shooting but was 0-4 from three and led the team in turnovers (4) in her team-high 36 minutes.

The Gamecocks held the Tigers to only 32% shooting and 31% from three, but were almost as turnover-prone as Mizzou, with 13 TO (SC) to 14 (MIZ).

Dylan’s recap reminded us that while the Tigers tried to hold on and compete early, ultimately Missouri and South Carolina are not in the same stratosphere talent-wise, as their bench alone scored 57 points, which is more than the Tigers’ total. Mizzou was also plagued with foul trouble from their tallest starters Laniah Randle and Angie Ngalakulondi all night, and both eventually fouled out after being limited to just 27 minutes between them.

In Dylan’s recent Hoopin’ and Hollerin, he mentioned Grace Slaughter as a Player to Watch. If the Tigers want to start SEC play with a bang, he wrote, it all has to start from the top. Slaughter has already had a sophomore year to remember, leading the team in points (14.2) and 3-point percentage (56.1%), but we’re still waiting for a breakout performance of 25+ points in her career. If Mizzou hopes to stay afloat in the SEC, Grace is going to need to be even more spectacular..

  • Next Up: The Tigers head to Tuscaloosa to take on no. 19 Alabama (14-1, 1-0 SEC). They are coming off a 10-point win against Florida and are 8-0 at home. Watch Sunday at 2pm on SEC+.

Wrestling

125-pounder Gage Walker, the newly minted starter with the recent retirement of Noah Surtin, got the Tigers started on the right foot with a victory by fall. but Kade Moore continues to struggle with displaying the fast offense and unique athleticism we saw a year ago. Zeke Seltzer, starting over the injured Logan Gioffre, won his match at 149lbs, to make it 9-7 Mizzou. From there, it was all downhill until the 284-pound Jarrett Stoner took a 5-0 decision in the final match of the night.

This squad desperately needs their spinach to bring out their inner Popeyes, or whatever they gave Brady Cook to bring him back to life against Auburn!

It’s been yet ANOTHER season of illness/injury for the Tigers, and it’s only gotten worse, per Matthew’s January 3 piece, as this time the injuries have hit earlier and seem to be worse. All-American Rocky Elam will be unable to wrestle this season as he continues his recovery, Noah Surtin announced his medical retirement after competing in just one meet this season, and even Keegan O’Toole has been bitten by the bug. Don’t worry, though; he’ll be back in February.

  • Next up: The Tigers will take on No. 15 Stanford on Sunday, January 12 at 2pm at Hearnes. You can watch on ESPN+.

Olympic Sports Photo Gallery

Enjoy these photos I took at Beauty & The Beast on Friday, January 3, and the Mizzou v. South Carolina game on Thursday, January 2. When Cal & Mike are back, I’ll pop in their OS photos as well, but for now, Karen Steger Action Phone Photography is the best we have.