Gymnastics impressive in season-opening win

While Penn's men's basketball team may have trouble putting away its opponents, its gymnastics team has no such trouble. The Quakers opened their season with a decisive win over Cornell at Hutchinson Gymnasium Saturday night. Penn won 186.075-176.050, a dominating margin of victory in gymnastics. Despite having two major injuries, the defending Ivy and ECAC champion Quakers received stellar performances from several underclassmen in winning the meet. Penn (1-0, 1-0 Ivy League) was led by sophomore Sarah Bruscia, who won the all-around with a score of 36.975. Freshman Sarah Tudryn scored a 9.6 on the uneven bars in her first college meet, pacing a record opening-meet score of 46.525 by the Quakers in the event. "I was very pleased by how our freshmen performed," Penn coach Tom Kovic said. "Sarah Tudryn had very good scores in three events, Juliana Mariani did great on the balance beam and Christy Paino did really well in two events, especially on the bar." Mariani scored an outstanding 9.7 on the balance beam, tying her with sophomore Jenn Capasso for the highest score in the event. Bruscia finished just behind them with a 9.65, still easily better than any Big Red gymnast. Paino competed in both the floor and uneven bars, where she scored a 9.425, second only to Tudryn's 9.60. These efforts made the seemingly costly injuries to senior Shannon Stafford and junior Lizzie Jacobson seem a little less important, even though the Quakers would obviously love to see their returns, which should come sometime in the next few weeks. The ease of the win over Cornell takes some of the urgency away, however. "A 10-point victory is pretty unusual," Kovic said. "We pretty much dominated the meet. I had expected a much closer meet, since I knew that Cornell had recruited really well." The Big Red (0-1, 0-1) were led by junior Elise DiVincenzo, who finished second in the all-around competition with a 36.250. Her only weak score out of the four events was on the beam, where she received only an 8.2. "Elise DiVincenzo did a really nice job for Cornell," Kovic said. "I recruited her a few years ago and was really impressed by her performance in the meet." The Big Red are also loaded with freshmen but they did not receive the same kind of strong performances from underclassmen that the Quakers did. Cornell did, however, have the same kind of injury problems. "They had eight strong freshmen on their team," said senior captain Molly Sullivan, who won the floor event with a 9.65. "I was talking to their coach before the meet and found out that they are a much deeper team than last year, though they were also plagued with injuries. In fact, I think two of their gymnasts got hurt in warm-ups." Despite having a deeper team than last year, when they were defeated 178.50-175.60, the Big Red had a significantly worse result. That could only be partially be blamed on a disappointing Big Red performance, since their score actually increased nearly half a point from last year. It was mostly because of a record first- meet total for the Quakers, which was a whopping 7.575 points higher than last year. According to Kovic, this was in part because of hosting the meet this year and competing in front of a great crowd. Still, the main reason was the clutch performances of freshmen who were able to fight off the tension of their first collegiate competition. "I was really nervous before I went, but I also felt confident after last week's practice," Tudryn said. "I was just trying to hit it like I did in practice." The meet was originally scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday. Because of bad road conditions, it was nearly postponed before it was decided that Cornell could arrive for a 7:30 p.m. Saturday start time. Unfortunately for the Big Red, only one team was ready for prime time -- and it was the Quakers.