Saving the best for last
Cambridge, MA 3/4/00 .......
On this beautiful Saturday afternoon in March, the women engineers hosted the minutewomen from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This was U-Mass women first trip ever to DuPont (their men's team competes here often) and it was a real treat to watch 9.8s and 9.85s flying in the gym from some of their very talented gymnasts. U-Mass is currently the 6th ranked Division I team in the region and they easily won the meet over MIT. But, as was mentioned at the beginning of the meet, 5 years ago U-Mass was beating MIT by over 30 points, and on this day, MIT kept the result to within 16 points by scoring their highest home score of the season 174.775 to U-Mass' 190.675.
It was the time to honor the seniors, as they would be participating in their last dual competition for MIT. In their own way, the U-Mass team was honoring MIT as well. U-Mass' coach Dave Kuzara expressed that his team's march in, holding silly balloons and wearing character slippers was meant to be a tribute to how much fun the MIT squad has when they compete. Over the years, coach Kuzara has always said that the MIT team has more fun than any other, and that is a real compliment to our program. It has been a tradition at MIT to allow the seniors to compete last in their final home meet, so the line-up order was very random on this day.
MIT began the day on vault with Cecile LeCocq '02, Liz Ellingson '01, Sonja Ellefson '01, Lindsey Wolf '03, Amy Shui '02 and senior captain Stephanie Cheng. All six vaulters performed very well including Lindsey's front handspring front tuck (the most difficult vault in the MIT line-up) which garnered a 9.0 and Stephanie's career high 8.8 on a handspring full. MIT totaled 43.375 while U-Mass was posting a very impressive 48.10 set on bars which included a 9.85 from former national team member Katie Teft, which frankly deserved a score closer to a perfect 10.0. On bars, MIT's line-up was basically in reverse order as our strongest bar worker, Sonja Ellefson, led off, and again Stephanie Cheng went last. Team bars today were a little shaky as the team seem to be having a little too much fun and took some uncharacteristic spills. Sonja posted a season high 9.575 and Amy followed with an 8.65 which contributed to a 40.925 event total. In the meantime, U-Mass ran off a 47.175 vault set led by Katie Teft's layout yurchenko vault for a 9.625.
Beam is where it all came together for MIT. First year student Caitlin Dwyer-McNally had an early slip on her routine but got back up to nail a trick that she has been missing all year and actually posted her season high score with an 8.15. Then, the beam team accomplished something that has only been done once before at MIT, four scores of 9.1 or better. The foursome in order were Liz Ellingson (9.1), Sonja Ellefson (9.15), Lindsey Wolf (9.1) and miss consistency herself, Amy Shui (9.15). Senior Robin Chiu closed out the beam set with a shaky 7.2, but MIT had already totaled up its best beam effort of the year with a 44.65. And, while MIT was rocking beam, U-Mass was putting on a show on floor scoring a 48.95 event total (out of possible 50 points) which included a pair of 9.8s by Megan Donoghue and Katie Teft, and a 9.85 by Mandy Mosby. Lastly, on floor, MIT danced their hearts out for their seniors totaling a 45.825 event score which was closed out with an 8.25 from Robin Chiu and a season high 9.1 from Stephanie Cheng. U-Mass, on the other hand, gave away a couple of points on beam as only 2 of their 6 competitors were able to stay on the equipment. Nevertheless, they put on quite a show and it was a great experience to have them come to MIT.
Our two seniors do have one final opportunity to compete at home as this year MIT is hosting the Division III ECAC Championships next Saturday at 1:00 pm. The meet will actually take place in Rockwell Cage rather than in DuPont and will display the best of Division III gymnastics in the east, including the teams from SUNY-Brockport, SUNY-Cortland, Springfield College, Ithaca College, Ursinus College, Rhode Island College and Wilson College. This meet will determine which teams move on to the Division III Nationals Championships in Springfield on March 24th and 25th. As a final note, MIT's Sonja Ellefson will be defending her ECAC All-Around title which she earned last year with an ECAC record 38.125. Hope to see you next week.