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It is safe to say the Penn gymnastics team did not enjoy this weekend's visit to Washington, D.C. The Quakers, visiting the nation's capital for the George Washington University Invitational, were shut down by the other six schools, finishing a distant seventh in the seven-team field. The host Colonials won their fifth consecutive GW Invitational title, narrowly defeating William and Mary by a score of 190.725 to 187.250. Penn, the only Ivy League school in the competition, finished with a score of 176.850, well behind the other competing schools -- Maryland, Southern Connecticut State, Bridgeport and Temple. The problems started for Penn before the meet even began. Freshman Shannon Stafford missed the meet for personal reasons, and classmate Stacey Weiner could not make the trip due to illness. The situation would not prove much better for those who did make the trip. In the opening event, the uneven bars, no Quakers gymnast placed in the top 20 or even broke the nine-point plateau. Things only got worse on the balance beam when every Penn gymnast -- with the exception of freshman Molly Sullivan -- slipped off the beam. That series of mistakes put the Quakers well off the pace of the other schools before the meet even reached the halfway point. "We got off to a real bad start on bars and beams," Penn sophomore Kathleen Gunn said. "We were competing against hard teams to start with, so it was definitely tough." The Quakers regrouped for the last two events. Led by superb floor performances from Sullivan, Gunn and sophomore Carin Kaplan, who all posted scores of 9.4, the Quakers were able to pull themselves back to the brink of contention. Again in the vault, it was Sullivan who came up with a strong showing with a team-high score of 9.25, while Gunn added a high vault score of 9.20. But, in the end, it would not be enough. The rest of the competition pulled away, leaving Penn a full 6.25 points behind sixth-place Temple. Not all was bad for the Quakers, however. Sullivan competed in every event for the first time in her collegiate career and delivered with an huge performance. She led Penn in every event except for the uneven bars and played a vital role in keeping the Quakers from being blown out. The rest of the Penn gymnasts came up with gutsy performances in the second half of the meet, overcoming the trouble-ridden opening events. "We didn't let the first two events ruin the last two. Everyone did very well on floor and vaults," Gunn said. This weekend, when the Quakers face Yale, the defending Ivy League champion, Penn hopes it can parlay the momentum gained by the teams' strong performance in the last two events into an effort that will challenge the elite Elis.

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