Penn gymnastics awaits sole home meet

This Sunday, the women’s gymnastics team comes home.

In the Quakers’ only meet at the Palestra all season, against Bridgeport, it is the Red and Blue’s most–and least–experienced members that merit watching.

“The seniors are really excited for their only home meet,” coach John Ceralde said. As the only home meet, this will be this season’s senior meet. Unfortunately, Dana Bonincontri is still injured and will not be able to compete. Without Bonincontri, four seniors will be competing on Sunday.

All four healthy freshmen will also be competing this weekend after their strong showing in West Chester. “I’m really happy to see the underclassmen stepping up; the freshmen are coming alive,” Ceralde said.

With many of the gymnasts still injured, the lineup will look pretty similar to last weekend. Some of the injuries have opened up the spots that the freshmen have been filling and allowed them to really step up.

“Right now we are just trying to stay healthy and put up the best lineup we can for this weekend,” Ceralde said.

Freshman Carissa Lim will be bookending the meet, competing on vault and floor. She will be competing a new vault for the second time, a Yurchenko with a full twist that has a start value of a 10.0.

Lim’s new vault certainly contributes to the improvement of the team on vault this season.

A somewhat surprising weak spot of the Red and Blue has proved to be the beam.

“Beam is one of our strongest events, we just need to be more consistent on it,” Ceralde said. Last weekend the team went 47.200 on beam with three falls.

The team hopes to perform better on beam this weekend.

“Competing in the Palestra is exciting, period. And of course the upperclassmen love it,” Ceralde said.

“It will be nice to have a home crowd and have friends come and watch,” Lim said.

This will be the first regular, non-championship meet that will be taking place in the Palestra in many years.

While the upperclassmen know and love the arena, the freshmen are excited for their first experience there.

One of the big advantages to having a home meet is competing in Olympic order. Olympic order begins on Vault and then moves on to Bars, Beam and Floor, respectively. Not only do the gymnasts love competing in this order, but it also means ending on floor. “It’s really exciting to end on floor especially in front of a home crowd,” Lim said.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, she’ll get that ending.

SEE ALSO

BRIEF | Penn gymnastics tallies season high

Penn gymnastics prepares for West Chester

BRIEF | Gymnastics finishes second at Indiana tri-meet

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.