Gymnastics brings home fourth from Towson Invite

The Penn gymnastics team put together its fourth highest score of the season in Maryland. At an early-Sunday-morning hour in which many college students were just beginning to call it a night, the Red and Blue gymnastics team was preparing to face some of the toughest competition it has seen all season. On Sunday, Penn's gymnasts loaded up the bus and headed to Towson, Md., for the six-team Towson Invitational. The Quakers placed fourth in the field, which included three teams ranked in the NCAA Southeast Regional. The home team, Towson, finished first for the 13th consecutive year. Though the Quakers were forced to count a handful of missed routines, they did manage to scrape their way to a solid 185.725 showing, their fourth-highest point total of the season. "I think the one thing that stood out this weekend, as far as the team is concerned, was that they they were scrappy competitors -- they hung in there, they were tough," Quakers coach Tom Kovic said. "They were up at 5 o'clock in the morning to take a bus to Towson." The six-team format made the competition a difficult one. Unlike standard dual meets, which last under two hours, the Towson Invitational went close to three hours. Having six teams also meant that each team rotated through two bye stations in addition to the day's four events. With a long day in front of them, the Quakers needed to start the day off right in their first event, the balance beam. In hopes of achieving this, Kovic turned to a freshman, Jenn Capasso. "She's our lead-off on balance beam. That was our first event of the competition, which is a tough event to start on, but she rocked her routine," Kovic said. Led by Capasso and Lizzie Jacobson (who also scored a 9.575), Penn managed a 47.150 team score on the beam, higher than all but Towson and GW. "I take my role as starter on this event really seriously," Capasso, who added a personal-best 9.425 on vault, said. "I think it's really important that the first gymnast set the tone for the upcoming teammates by hitting that first performance." Several other Quakers performed well on Sunday as well. Molly Sullivan took home eighth in the all-around with 37.350 points. Lizzie Jacobson also pitched in with a strong all-around performance. "Lizzie did a really nice job. It doesn't really show in her all-around score but she was extremely strong on balance beam and was heroic in a way," Kovic said. After junior Shannon Stafford went down with a leg injury, Jacobson was forced to step up and fill the vault slot. "It was a surprise to be asked to vault. I'm sorry Shannon was not able to [perform] due to her knee, but I was more than willing to fill in," Jacobson said. "I had to just be sure to focus in and do what I know how to." As they head into the final stretch of their season, the Quakers realize that even the slightest fraction of a point can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Though Penn lost a heartbreaking, half-point meet at Yale on January 31, they rebounded Sunday at Towson, downing the rival Elis by 0.7 points. Tri-captain Shilpa Rao set an example for the Quakers by making score-improving adjustments to her routines. Shilpa normally attempts a pike tsukhara on the vault, in which the body is bent at the waist more than 90 degrees while the legs are kept straight. On Sunday, though, she attempted a more-difficult layout tsukhara, where the body is kept straight and the back is slightly arched. "The pike tsuk that I've been competing is worth a 9.6 [when done perfectly]. The layout tsuk is worth a 9.8," Rao, who notched a personal-best on the vault and also led Penn on the bars, said. "Since our goals are really high, we want to win ECACs and we'd really like to make it to [NCAA] regionals this year, we really need to be doing the hardest skills as well as the best performance that we can." Getting the extra tenth will be especially important at the Ivy Classic next Sunday. There, Penn will once again try to assert its Ivy dominance by beating the Elis in its third confrontation with Yale this season.