Temple University Athletics
Women's Gymnastics Narrowly Edged by Cornell in Final Home Meet
3.8.08 | Women's Gymnastics
Complete Release in PDF Format 
March 8, 2008
PHILADELPHIA - The Temple women's gymnastics team (7-14) brought down the house with a solid floor effort in their final rotation, but it wasn't enough to overtake the Big Red of Cornell as they dropped an intense dual meet scoring a 189.125 to Cornell's 190.375. The Saturday afternoon gymnastics competition also honored the talented senior class of Nicole Catrambone, Kristen McRell, Caitlin Egan, Christine McNeill, Desire acute; Meredith, and Alycia Petitto.
The first rotation found Temple on the vault, with Cornell on the uneven bars. Petitto lead-off with a solid handspring front-tuck (9.400), and watched the momentum build as Meredith (Tsukahara layout-half) and McNeill (Yurchenko-full) rocked solid scores of 9.825 and 9.625, respectively. Cornell swung some amazing uneven bar routines for a 48.075 to take the early lead over Temple who amassed a 47.750 on vault.
Temple moved to the uneven bars in the second rotation, and due to a judge's conference prior to the start of the rotation, sophomore Danielle Viens was forced to wait nearly 10 minutes before starting her opening routine. The long wait took its toll on Viens, as she was unable to make her first handstand, and was forced to repeat her opening element of healy-straddle back-toe shoot to high bar. Natasha Crawford swung a stellar healy spin to immediate Jaeger, and McNeill anchored with a strong 9.625 (stuck double back dismount).Meanwhile, Cornell was throwing huge vaults for a two rotation total of 96.300 to Temple's 95.375.
Meredith and Petitto started the third rotation on the beam with two missed routines, but the Owls were put back on track by sophomore Monica Zuber (flip-flop, flip-flop, back tuck; double-full dismount) and Kathryn Ho (nice flip-flop, layout; switch leap to immediate back tuck). Sophomore Nina Oteri anchored with a team high 9.725 (flip-flop, flip-flop, layout; rudi dismount) for the individual win on that event.
Over on the floor exercise, Cornell negotiated a lot of tricky combination tumbling to extend their lead over the Owls.
Temple moved to the floor exercise for the last rotation with a solid lead-off routine from Winter Sneed (huge double pike mount; rudi; 1.5 dismount) for a 9.750 and first place on the event. Competing in the second lineup position on floor was senior co-captain Caitlin Egan, who tumbled a solid whip-half to front-full mount and came back with an even better whip-immediate double-full. Egan just made her competitive comeback for the Owls two short prior to this competition after suffering an injury to her foot during Temple's home opener in early February.
Crawford, Viens, Meredith, and Oteri all hit their floor routines to put the pressure on Cornell, who must have been feeling the strain of ending on balance beam where they were forced to count three falls and several wobbles.
Although Temple came roaring back on the floor, it was not enough to capitalize on Cornell's shaky beam rotation. Regardless of the loss, Temple secured a solid 189.125, their second highest team score of this season.
"Beam was rough for us, but this team did exactly what we've been telling them to do all season long. They didn't let beam ruin the rest of the competition...they stayed strong and positive all the way to the end," said second year head coach Aaron Murphy.
Temple will face Cornell once again later in the season at a quad meet in Pittsburgh on March 22nd. Prior to that, Temple heads down to the University of Maryland for a matchup against the Terps on March 15th.
Fans who were unable to attend the dual between Cornell and Temple can view the archived Web stream at http://all-access.cstv.com/cstv/player/player.html?code=tem&sport=w-gym&category=live&media=63380.
