Photo by: Jacob Rokeach
The Pioneer gymnastics team won its second straight tournament, the Alumni Classic, last Saturday at Hamilton Gymnasium. The Pioneers defeated the New Hampshire Wildcats with a score 196.425 to 189.775. DU was ranked 17th going into the tournament. The Pioneers are now 2-0 at home and 3-4 overall for the season.
The Pioneers had a season-high night, with an overall team score of 196.425. The overall score for each event saw the Pioneers hit their best scores of the year as well. On the vault, DU recorded a 49.100 led by Courtney Brown and Heather Huffaker with scores of 9.875 each. On the uneven bars, Jessica Lopez tied her career best score and the school’s second best score in its history with another 9.975. She earned the same score last weekend on the uneven bars against Air Force.
“I have been working for it. I just want to keep the hard work through the season,” said Lopez on her second 9.975.
While Lopez was thrilled about having tied her personal best for the second straight week, she was more excited about getting the opportunity to see and compete against her friend from Venezuela, Melissa Cesar. Lopez said of seeing Cesar, “I was pretty excited and happy about it.”
Lopez’s teammates also had career high scores on the uneven bars. Courtney Butler scored her career best 9.9 while Nikki Brown recorded her personal best 9.875. The team score for the uneven bars, 49.35, is the fifth highest bar score in the history of the program at DU. The Pioneers scored 48.9 on the balance beam while scoring 49.075 on the floor. While the beam was not Denver’s best performance of the year, the scores on the other three components were season highs.
DU coach Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart was pleased with her team’s effort.
“I’m really pleased at their performance. I still think we even have room to improve from here,” said Kutcher-Rinehart. “But all we’re really focusing on is getting stronger and stronger every meet just to continue to improve.”
When asked about the possible reason behind such a strong beam performance Kutcher-Rinehart responded, “We’re actually fairly strong on all the events. It’s the consistency we’re working on. It’s having everyone in the line-up hit on every event and that’s something we are now putting together. This is where we want to continue to improve.”
On the floor exercise, the Pioneers got the crowd riled up and excited to be there. With the music pounding and the gymnasts bounding it was fun for all. Sasha Sullivan won the floor exercise with a 9.9 while Heather Huffaker and Jessica Lopez came in second with 9.875.
The Pioneers took all three podium positions for each of the events except for the balance beam. Nikki Brown won the beam with a 9.9 and Ellen McCarthy came in second with a score of 9.8. Also with a 9.8 on the beam was New Hampshire’s Jaime DeMello. DeMello was the wildcat’s only podium appearance.
For the all around, Sullivan won with a 39.1 and Huffaker came in second with a 39.0.
The Pioneers will compete in Hamilton again on Feb. 10, when they host UCLA for the Paige Smith Invitational.
