Penn is first Ivy to win ECACs

The Penn gymnastics team wins the ECACs, scoring a school-record 190.575 points. In his 11 years at Penn, Quakers gymnastics coach Tom Kovic has always set high goals for his team. On Saturday night, the Red and Blue reached those goals, taking home Penn's first-ever ECAC Championship title with an all-time school scoring record of 190.575. Dominating the post-meet awards ceremony, the Quakers took home 12 of a possible 30 first-team All-ECAC spots while erasing four team scoring records, equalling or beating two individual records and piling up 10 personal-best event performances. Penn's team score was also the highest ever recorded at James Madison University's Godwin Hall. "Winning ECACs was a goal from the beginning, since Tom [Kovik]'s first talk with the team this season," All-ECAC first team on vault Shannon Stafford said. Senior tri-captain Kathleen Gunn led the Quakers in scoring, finishing second all around with 38.075 points. Her score was good enough to qualify her for the NCAA regionals in Pittsburgh on April 7. Though the champion Quakers expected Vermont, ranked first heading into the competition, to give them a run for the title, the teams that proved toughest were long-time ECAC powers William and Mary and James Madison, who finished second and third with team scores of 190.050 and 189.525, respectively. "They are teams in the past that have seemed almost unbeatable," Shilpa Rao said. "Early in the year, when Tom [Kovic] named 'winning ECACs' as one of our goals, we were like 'Uh, huh. Sure, Tom,' but as the season progressed we realized that we really could have the title." Kovic, however, never doubted that his team had the mettle needed to break the 190 barrier and win the team's first title. "Honestly, there were no surprises," Kovic said. "We used the Yale meet back in January as a reference. We were two points up and we couldn't close it out. What really makes a team a championship team is a team that can close out a competition. That's what they did last night." Because of the eight-team format, the Quakers were forced to adapt to a bars-to-beam-to-floor-to-vault rotation instead of the traditional dual meet rotation of vault, bars, beam and floor. This change didn't hinder the Penn squad, which is traditionally strongest on the beam and floor. The Quakers apparently benefitted from getting the bars out of the way early. "We came off of a little bit of a rough bar rotation, but going into beam we just had the confidence knowing it was our event," ECAC Scholar-Athlete of the Year Lizzie Jacobson said. Jacobson, a sophomore, took first place on beam, tying her own team record of 9.8. "It's the place where we win a meet," she said. Penn outdistanced the competition on floor as well as beam. The Quakers' individual floor scoring record of 9.8, held by Monique Burton, had stood unchallenged in the record books for over three years. Saturday night, Becky Nadler and Molly Sullivan each exceeded that mark with respective first- and second-place finishes, scoring 9.85 and 9.825. Senior tri-captain Kathleen Gunn equaled Burton's old record, placing fourth. Before the Quakers could get rolling in their strongest events, they had to get through bars. Always the team's toughest event, bars was left even more questionable with the pre-meet status of Shilpa Rao. Rao, a senior tri-captain, injured her ankle against Bridgeport two weeks earlier and was forced to pull out of all events but the bars. "Her ankle was still tender. We watched her ankle very carefully in practice all week, especially on her dismounts," Kovic said. Rao, however, was not about to let her final college meet slip by as a mere spectator. Stepping up her performance level, Rao notched a personal best 9.625, turning in a fifth-place performance on bars. "It's been bothering me since I injured it, but my ankle was the last thing on my mind going into the event," Rao said. "Only when I let go for my dismount was I thinking, 'Oh gosh, I hope it feels okay.' " Career-best performances like Rao's, which Kovic called "very gutsy, very courageous," were a Penn trademark Saturday. Freshman Sarah Bruscia, competing on beam for the first time in her varsity career, filled in for Rao without missing a beat. Bruscia's 9.625 contributed to a Penn team-record beam score of 48.525. Freshman Jenn Capasso achieved two personal bests while placing second in both vault and beam. Shannon Stafford also scored a personal best while placing fourth on vault. By defeating a strong field, Penn made a name for itself as the first Ivy League school ever to win an ECAC title. "It kind of proves that Ivy League schools can have good athletics as well as good academics," Sullivan said. Sullivan's fifth-place performance earned her All-ECAC first-team status in the all-around. "It just felt really good, especially as this was the last meet for the seniors." And this last meet is one the seniors will surely remember. The 1997-98 Quakers capped an outstanding season with a record-breaking day and an ECAC championship.