Feb. 22, 2014
194.575 Rutgers |
Piscataway, N.J. • Livingston Rec Center • Attendance: 1,172 | 195.825 No. 20 Penn State (12-2, 3-1 Big Ten) |
PISCATAWAY, N.J.; February 22, 2014 - It was the Rolling Stones that uttered the famous phrase or `You can't always get what you want...you get what you need.' The Penn State women's gymnastics team couldn't set a new season-best team score on Saturday in a quad meet at Rutgers with Temple and Ursinus, but they collected enough points to win the quad meet and improve to 12-2 on the season.
"It was a good meet for us. We were extremely proud of the way the girls competed," said head coach Jeff Thompson. "We started on balance beam and then headed to the floor exercise, where we had probably our second best performance of the season. Then on the vault we got three sticks and got our best team effort on the event.
"We stumbled on our first two uneven bar routines, including a pretty scary fall on one of our dismounts. We were able to regroup and really showed a lot of heart in our last four routines. It was great to see our girls rally behind their teammates and is a sign of good things to come for our team."
Penn State posted the top team score on three of the four apparatus. They posted a season-best score of 49.175 to win the vault, topped the uneven bar standings at 48.600 and posted the top score on the floor exercise at 49.200. Rutgers won the balance beam at 49.000, just ahead of the Nittany Lions 48.850.
The Nittany Lions swept the top three spots on the vault, with Sidney Sanabria-Robles (Caguas, Puerto Rico) winning the event with a career-best score of 9.900. It is the second straight meet the junior has topped the vault charts and she now has three individual event wins on the season.
Juniors Krystal Welsh (Bowie, Md.) and Randi Lau (Honolulu, Hawaii) both tied their season-best scores on the vault, with Welsh equaling her career-best at 9.875 to finish second overall and Lau checking in at 9.850 to tie for third.
Welsh and senior Kassidy Stauder (Palmerton, Pa.) tied for the title on the uneven bars with identical scores of 9.850. Stauder has now won or tied for the event title on the uneven bars five times in 2014, while Welsh has now tied for the uneven bars crown twice on the year. Robles also finished fourth on the even bars at 9.800.
Preforming in her home state, freshman Nicole Medvitz (Paramus, N.J.) placed second on the balance beam with a score of 9.825. It ties for her second best performance of the season and marks the third straight meet she has posted a score of 9.825 or better.
Welsh and Stauder finished second and third, respectively, in the all-around competition and each of them counted all four scores towards the team total. Welsh posted a career-best score of 39.325, scoring 9.800 or better on three of the four events, while Stauder posted her third best score of the year at 39.300, with all four scores going 9.800 or better.
The Nittany Lions return home for their final regular season competition of the season when they host Senior Day against Bridgeport, Western Michigan and Yale on Friday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m.
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