Gymnasts ip two ranked teams

The seventh-ranked Michigan women's gymnastics team is beginning the new year on the right foot with an upset over No. 2 Florida and No. 25 Illinois this weekend, despite the Gators' home advantage at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center.

This weekend's competition was the third straight victory for the Wolverines over Florida. Michigan finished with a score of 193.300, 3.025 points in front of Florida and 4.550 points ahead of Illinois. Such a significant point difference should prove to be a confidence builder for the Wolverines in their upcoming meets.

"It feels really good to start off the season this way," senior Lisa Simes said. "It is definitely a confidence builder because it helps us to see how all of our hard work pays off, and this will keep us motivated through our other meets."

The Wolverines were led by junior Sarah Cain, who finished with a tie for second place in the all-around competition (38.500), the vault (9.825) and the balance beam (9.675), as well as a tie for first place in the floor exercise (9.850).

"Sarah, everyone else and I were just happy that we could contribute to the overall team score - it's not really an individual thing," Simes said.

Other top Michigan finishers in the all-around competition included Simes and sophomore Bridget Knaeble, scoring 38.500 and 38.325, respectively.

Michigan's best event in the meet was the vault, which was supported by the consistently higher scores on the apparatus. The Wolverines tallied a team score of 48.775. The balance beam came in a far second, lagging .550 points behind.

Simes said, part of the reason for such a strong performance on the vault was that the apparatus was the last event of the four and each competitor got two chances to do it right.

"We were pretty fired up by the last rotation," Simes said. "We kept the ball rolling - we started off good and finished great."

The floor exercise and the uneven bars apparatuses look to be the weaknesses as of now for the Wolverines, although they were not greatly affected by them in this particular meet. The team scores for the two events were 48.200 for floor exercise and 48.100 for uneven bars.

The breaks in the routines on both floor and bars are fixable with practice and Michigan is focusing more on tightening up the routines instead of worrying about the scoring, Simes said.

Despite the lower score in uneven bars, senior Nikki Peters managed to finish with a first-place tie on the event, scoring a 9.750.

None of the Michigan freshmen competed in the meet this weekend, although sophomore Karina Senior performed in her first collegiate competition and finished with a tie for fourth place on the balance beam, scoring 9.650.

Senior was initially only supposed to exhibition her routine, but was put into the lineup at the last minute.

"We were all so excited for Karina," Simes said. "We all knew she could do it and it was really great to see her perform in competition as well as she does in the gym."

The next meet for the Wolverines will be this Friday against Minnesota in Cliff Keen Arena at 7 p.m.

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