Beam Demons
Cambridge, MA 2/12/2000 .......
Last week the MIT women's gymnastics team fell off beam 6 times and scored a 175.725. Today, the beam team suffered 5 falls and scored a 170.575. The only thing that remained consistent from meet to meet is that the MIT team could not stay on beam. The difference in the scoring, from one week to the next and from a different group of officials, is what makes this subjective sport difficult to understand sometimes. The college gymnastics teams all throughout the nation have complained for many years that scoring is not consistent from one region to the next. In this case, it is grossly inconsistent from just one neighboring state to another. The same Yale team that scored a 190+ at home last week, came to MIT and scored a 183.675. In Yale's defense, they were competing without their team captain and leader who tore her ACL the week before. The third team in the meet was the University of Vermont who finished second with a 172.525. The two point difference between MIT and UVM marks the closest that MIT has ever been to defeating the Catamounts.
MIT was also competing without their captain as Stephanie Cheng was out of town on a job interview. With Steph's absence, Caitlin Dwyer-McNally '03 took her place on vault, Lindsey Wolf '03 took her spot on bars, and fellow senior Robin Chiu substituted for her on floor. The meet began with MIT on vault and Vermont on bars. This meet saw the return of junior Sonja Ellefson's layout tsukahara for a 9.275. Overall, the vaults were as solid as they have been all year as the team posted a 42.225 event total. Meanwhile, UVM swung a 41.55 on bars with somewhat of a depleted line-up. MIT them moved to bars as UVM sat on a bye and Yale started their meet on vault. First year student Carrie Garceau led the bars line-up and hit the best routine of the year so far for an 8.6. Carrie continues to compete only bars and without a dismount because of a very tender and stubborn tendonitis in her ankle. Other bar highlights included Karla Maguire's '01 solid routine with the new full twisting fly-away dismount for an 8.0, and Amy Shui's '02 8.6 that included a fall. Amy actually suffered a serious fall off bars this week in practice and was still a bit rattled from it during the meet, but she competed all-around and scored a respectable 33.875. Sonja sealed off a 42.15 bar total with a 9.4 routine. Yale meanwhile, was also competing with a shallow line-up on vault and posted a 44.90 event total.
The second half of the meet included MIT's beam struggles. The team was hoping to have a better team beam day at home, but the only two gymnasts that managed to remain on the apparatus were Lindsey Wolf '03 (8.1) and junior Liz Ellingson who led the way with a 9.1. The beam team total was a dismal 40.60 and I believe it probably marks the first time ever that MIT has scored higher on bars than on beam. That is as much a tribute to the bars line-up as it is anything else, but this team is much better on beam than they are on bars. If one good thing came out of the beam performance, is that the team felt they had to make up for it on floor, and they did. The team posted a well deserved 45.60 total on floor which included a great 9.15 routine from sophomore Cecile LeCocq, a 9.325 from Liz Ellingson and a solid 9.525 from Sonja Ellefson.
For the second meet in a row, it was very solid and even stellar performances on three events, and a subpar effort on beam for the MIT women's gymnastics team. This team has another shot at getting closer to Vermont when they travel to Vermont in two weeks. It would be quite a feat for an MIT team to defeat a Division I UVM team, but the team must look to their next meet first. This coming Wednesday the 16th, the team will travel down to Division III rival Rhode Island College. The meets between these two teams have been traditionaly close and MIT will have a chance to post their first victory of the year, but they'll have to do better on beam in order to earn it.