Jan. 18, 2014
1st of 4 Cornell, Southeast Missouri & UIC |
University Park, Pa. • Rec Hall • Attendance: 1,845 | 196.025 Penn State (6-1) |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; January 18, 2014 - A 49.400 on the floor exercise not only closed out a victory, but marked a top-10 event score in school history, as the Penn State women's gymnastics squad topped the four-team standings with an overall mark of 196.025. The Nittany Lions topped Southeast Missouri State (193.800), Cornell (191.000) and UIC (189.125) inside Rec Hall to improve to 6-1 on the season.
The Nittany Lions saved their best performance for last in the quad meet as the Rec Hall crowd witnessed one of the top team performances on the floor exercise in program history. The team score of 49.400 is tied with the 2004, '05 and '11 squads for the ninth best mark in school history. The team swept the top five scores on the event, led by junior Krystal Welsh's (Bowie, Md.) career-best score of 9.925.
The Nittany Lions arrived at a season-best score of 196.025 by posting scores of 49.075 on the vault, 49.175 on the uneven bars, 48.375 on the balance beam and the aforementioned score of 49.400 on the floor exercise.
"We were outstanding tonight," said head coach Jeff Thompson. "We got off to a great start on each event, which was something that we focused on this week. We got off to a great start on vault, carried that over to uneven bars and, even with two falls on balance beam, we still looked very good. The team really stuck together and supported one another on that event and then we nailed our floor routines to end the night with a solid score in our first home meet."
The Ann Carr Award winner, senior Lindsay Musgrove (League City, Texas) finished second on the floor exercise, tying a career-best with a 9.900, while juniors Randi Lau (Honolulu, Hawaii) and Sidney Sanabria-Robles (Caguas, Puerto Rico) both set career-high scores for the second straight week. They posted scores of 9.875 and 9.850, respectively. Sophomore Samantha Musto also scored a career-high mark with a score of 9.850.
Senior Kassidy Stauder (Palmerton, Pa.) won her first career all-around title with a career-best showing of 39.275, edging teammate Lau's score of 39.225, which was also a career-best.
Stauder claimed the individual event victory on the uneven bars and balance beam, tying her career-high score on both events. Stauder anchored the Nittany Lions balance beam lineup with a 9.900 and was the No. 5 performer on the uneven bars and collected a mark of 9.875. She scored 9.775 as the leadoff on floor exercise and hit a 9.725 score on the vault to open the meet.
A pair of rookies put together career best routines on Saturday, as well. Nicole Medvitz (Paramus, N.J.) set new personal best scores on the uneven bars (9.850) and on the balance beam (9.775), finishing second and third, respectively, in her two events. Emma Sibson (Allen, Texas) won her first career event title when she nailed a 9.850 vault pass to top the event charts.
Penn State will return to competition when they open their Big Ten season at Michigan State on Saturday, Jan. 25 for a 2 p.m. start.
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