Brown sends Ivy League message to Gymnastics

A drastically improved Brown gymnastics squad scored a home upset over defending Ivy champion Penn. It appears as if there is a new gymnastics rivalry brewing in the Ivy League. Penn found out the hard way. The Quakers finished on the short side of a 182.700- 182.575 score at Brown on Sunday. The margin was by far the closest of any meet Penn has competed in this year. This year's Bears team (8-1, 1-0 Ivy League) is much different from the one that lost by nine points at Penn last year. Easily the most-improved team in the Ivy League, Brown appears to be Penn's only conference competition since the Quakers blew out both perennial rivals, Yale and Cornell. "It was a real heartbreaker," Penn coach Tom Kovic said. "There were many lead changes throughout the meet. They were just more clean on the last routine." After completing three of the four events, the Quakers (2-1, 2-1) held a slim lead. The final routine for Penn was the balance beam, while the Bears finished on the floor. Kovic felt confident that the Quakers matched up well against Brown in that situation. The combination of a couple of costly falls by Penn and Brown's clean execution, however, gave the Bears enough of an edge to overtake the Quakers for the win. Penn was once again led by senior co-captain Molly Sullivan, who had the meet's best all-around score with a 37.125. Sophomore Sarah Bruscia was the only other Quaker to compete in the all-around. Brown's top performer was senior co-captain Bethany Boisvert. She scored a 37.000 on the all-around, including a first-place 9.600 on the beam and a 9.450 on the vault, which was good enough for a first-place tie. The main reasons for Brown's significant improvement this year are Boisvert's recovery from an injury and the emergence of freshmen Jessica Buck and Kate Hirschmann-Levy. Without those three gymnasts, the Bears struggled last year. The Quakers were given a lift by the return of senior co-captain Shannon Stafford, who competed in the floor exercise. Stafford missed the first three weeks of the season while recovering from ACL surgery. "It felt good to be back competing with the team," Stafford said. "I wasn't in top form, but I should be in a couple of weeks." Junior Kirby Thorpe was a late scratch from the bars lineup. As expected, the Quakers were also without the services of junior Lizzie Jacobson due to a torn ACL and freshman Sarah Tudryn, who has a sprained ankle. "My ankle's doing pretty well; it's a lot stronger than last week," Tudryn said. "I'm hoping to be back on the bars next week -- the only problem would be the dismount." Penn has had a trend of lower scores that can be attributed to the injuries that have plagued the Quakers and forced them to use many replacements. Tudryn competes in the all-around, so her injury leaves four vacant positions. Stafford is still unable to compete in her normal quota of events, and Thorpe and Jacobson are out as well. "Despite the scores, I think that this team has improved greatly," Kovic said. "Consider what has happened to this team this year. It would have broken the morale of a lot of teams, but not this one." The Quakers may be positive, but they are also much better informed about just how tough Brown is. When the teams meet later this season in the Ivy Classic, reigning champ Penn will now know to expect the most resistance from the Bears in its title defense.