MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – After scoring a career-best 9.975 on vault on March 16, freshman Sophia Rice of the West Virginia University gymnastics team has been named the Big 12 Conference Event Specialist of the Week, the league announced on Tuesday.
 
The weekly honor marks the second of the season for Rice, while it is her first career event specialist nod. She received her first career honor on Jan. 7, as the league's newcomer of the week. She becomes the first Mountaineer to garner multiple Big 12 weekly awards in the same season since Kirah Koshinski was named the Big 12 Newcomer of the Week five different times in 2016.
 
A native of Morgantown, Rice's accolade comes after she led WVU's vault lineup in a huge way, scoring a pair of career-high scores across two meets last week. She earned an impressive 9.975 in a quad meet at Ohio State on March 16, besting her previous career best of 9.9, which she earned at Penn two days prior on March 14. Rice received a perfect 10.0 from one judge and a 9.95 from the other for a stuck Tsuk full vault.
 
The 9.975 total marked the first for the Mountaineers on vault since Kari Wiliams earned the score Feb. 13, 2005. It also is the first 9.975 on any event for WVU since Koshinski earned it on floor on Feb. 17, 2019.
 
Rice is now one of just seven Mountaineer gymnasts who have earned a 9.975 on vault in program history. She also is one of just three gymnasts in the Big 12 Conference to score a 9.975 on vault this season, as well as the first freshman in the conference to hit the mark on the event this year.
 
Additionally, Rice's scores at both meets helped WVU reach a pair of season highs on vault, first hitting a 49.125 on March 14, before besting that total with a 49.225 on March 16.
 
West Virginia now looks ahead to the 2025 Big 12 Gymnastics Championship, scheduled for Saturday, March 22, at the Maverick Center in West Valley City, Utah. The championship will consist of two sessions and seeding was determined based on teams' National Qualifying Scores (NQS) on Road to Nationals. No. 6-seed WVU will compete in the afternoon session, beginning at 2 p.m. ET on ESPN+, against No. 5 BYU and No. 7 Iowa State.
 
For more information on the Mountaineers, follow @WVUGymnastics on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.