Feb. 17, 2018
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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Freshman Lauren Bridgens (Darnestown, Md.) won three event titles and the all-around title as the Penn State women's gymnastics team (195.325) defeated Cornell (192.400) and Penn (192.200) in a non-conference tri-meet Saturday at Rec Hall.
"Tonight was a good night for us," head coach Sarah Brown said. "We started out strong, we only had five up on vault and I thought we had a really strong rotation there. Again, bars continues to be an area where we do well. But again, I think there is more that we can do. We can hit better handstands and stick a few more landings.
"I was really proud of the way the beam lineup got started tonight," Brown continued. "We've struggled in that 1-2 position, but I thought Peyton [Schuller] and Lauren [Bridgens] did a really great job. Unfortunately, we didn't finish as strong as we would have liked on that event. Moving to floor, I thought our energy was good and again the scores were great so if we can stay in bounds I think we're going to be a really complete team moving forward later on in the season."
On the day for Bridgens, she won the all-around and floor exercise titles outright and tied for the uneven bars and balance beam titles. Along with Bridgens winning titles, Briannah Tsang (Vancouver, British Columbia) won the vault title outright and Sabrina Garcia (Etters, Pa.) tied for the uneven bars title.
The Nittany Lions (4-4, 1-4 Big Ten) started the afternoon with a 48.800 on the vault with five gymnasts competing. On the vault for the Blue & White, four Nittany Lions recording top-five finishes. In addition to Tsang posting a 9.825 en route to her fourth vault title of the season, the freshmen duo Alissa Bonsall (Higganum, Conn.) and Bridgens tied for second with Ally Podsednik of Penn as they all posted a 9.775 and Garcia rounded out the top-five with a score of 9.750.
Penn State then moved to the uneven bars where it posted a 49.250. With Bridgens and Garcia tying with Kyra Levi of Penn for the uneven bars title (9.900), freshman Ava Verdeflor (Allen, Texas) notched a career-best 9.850 to place fourth. The PSU uneven bars lineup also saw sophomore Tess McCracken (Plano, Texas) tie a career-best outing (9.800) to tie for sixth with Tsang.
During the third rotation, Penn State posted a 48.375 on the balance beam. On the balance beam for PSU, Bridgens tied for first with a 9.775, which marked her first career balance beam title as a Penn Stater. Along with Bridgens on beam, Peyton Schuller (Erie, Pa.) tied for fifth (9.700), Mason Hosek (Pearland, Texas) placed seventh (9.675), and Kristen Politz (Morganville, N.J.) tied for ninth (9.625).
The Nittany Lions closed out the meet with a 48.900 on the floor exercise. Bridgens claimed her final event title of the day with a career-best 9.850 on the apparatus. Also on the floor exercise for Penn State, Bonsall posted a career-best 9.800 to tie for fourth-place with Tsang, while Schuller recorded a 9.750 to tie for eighth to round out the top-four scores for Penn State.
In the all-around standings, Bridgens finished the day with a career-best outing of 39.300 en route to her second career all-around title. Heading into Saturday's meet, Bridgens' career-best all-around score was 39.175, which she set last weekend at Ohio State.
Up next No. 28 Penn State hosts No. 21 George Washington on Feb. 24 at 4 p.m. at Rec Hall. The meet against George Washington is Penn State's final home meet of the regular season. The Penn State men will also be competing against Minnesota in a double dual format.