This week we are celebrating No. 4 ranked all-around gymnast Sachi Sugiyama as part of our Stellar Seniors series. Sachi competes for University of Michigan and is shining in her senior year, competing all-around for the first time since her freshman year, adding in upgrades, and achieving some of the highest scores of her NCAA career.

There must be something in the water in Texas, right? Sachi is originally from Keller, Texas where she trained at Top Flight Gymnastics and competed up to level 10. She started as a freshman at Michigan in 2012 and started competing all-around in only her second meet with the team. Sachi continuously scored very highly on floor, vault and bars throughout the season, and she became the Big Ten Champion on vault that year (with a huge 9.95 score, a career best), in addition to being runner up on uneven bars.

Sachi continued to contribute high scores for the team in her sophomore and junior years. In her sophomore year, she tied her career high on vault (a 9.95) in a meet against Minnesota, and she set a new career high on uneven bars (another 9.95) against UCLA. Sachi also improved a lot on floor this year, scoring a total of four 9.9s throughout the season, and tying for second place at Regionals. She was NCAA First Team All-American on vault in her junior year and also made the All-Big Ten Championships team.

Although Sachi had struggled on beam in the past, she added the event back in for her senior year, and, for the first time since her freshman year, she is competing all-around. This turned out to be a smart decision by Michigan, as Sachi has proved to be a top performer on all four events. So far, she has not scored lower than a 9.875 on her 1 ½ twisting yurchenko vault and she’s also tied her career high of 9.95 in a January meet against Nebraska. Her scores on bars have also remained high all season, including one 9.9 in a meet against Maryland. Not only are her scores high on this event, but she also competes some of the more difficult moves seen in NCAA gymnastics, such as a ginger and a pak salto. On floor, she upgraded her routine with a piked full in for her first pass, and she reached a new career high with a 9.925. Her scores have hovered around the 9.9 range on floor for most of the season. Most significantly, Sachi has improved dramatically on beam. While she was scoring in the mid to low 9.0 range in her freshman and early sophomore years, she has been very consistent this year, with her high score being a 9.875 in a meet against Michigan State a few weeks ago.

Check out Sachi's floor routine (including her dynamite first pass!) below:

Watch more videos on Gymnastike

We’re excited to see Sachi competing on all four events in her final year and we look forward to seeing what else she can achieve in the remainder of the season!

Related:
Sachi Sugiyama talks team success
Sachi Sugiyama talks upgrades
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