After having a week off, both men’s and women’s gymnastics will be back on the road this weekend for their respective competitions this Sunday. Men’s gymnastics (9-3) will be traveling north for a dual meet with State University of New York at Brockport. While women’s gymnastics (4-15) will be heading down south to West Virginia University for a quad-meet with Denver, George Washington and host West Virginia.

In facing tough opponents like West Virginia, George Washington and Denver, the women’s gymnastics team is not intimidated, but rather excited, to face high quality teams.

Women’s head coach Aaron Murphy said, “We will be going head to head with some pretty big programs in women’s gymnastics. West Virginia, Denver and George Washington have great teams and we have never seen Denver before, so, they will be fun to watch.”

In preparation for the meet, the Owls have been focusing on tidying up their routines to get the highest optimal score.

“We have taken the past week, along with this week, to clean up any execution errors that we have at this point to ensure that our team score will hit the 191.00 mark which we still need to do this season,” Murphy added.

Meanwhile, in facing SUNY Brockport, men’s gymnastics will be facing an opponent of lesser quality. Men’s head coach Fred Turoff plans to use this to his advantage, by providing valuable experience to gymnasts that are not in the everyday rotations.

“Since we’re meeting a team that is weak,” Turoff said. “It will give me a chance to work some guys who can’t make the primary squad.”

Turoff also explained that this Sunday’s meet is also a great opportunity to ease senior Brett Statman into the line-up. Statman has missed the majority of the season because of frequent back pain, and will look to make the best of the last meet the team has before their spring break trip, in which the team will face tough competition against California, Air-Force, and Illinois-Chicago.

For both men’s and women’s gymnastics, this Sunday’s competitions will begin at 2 p.m.

Senior gymnast Alex Tighe will be advancing to the final day of
competition at the Winter Cup held in Las Vegas. The Brookfield WI.,
native placed 11th on high bar and 17th on pommel horse, good enough
to advance through the preliminary rounds of approximately 92
gymnasts.

Although Tighe advanced, he was still not completely satisfied with his day.

“It was some good, some bad,” Tighe said. “I had a nice pommel horse
routine, it was nice and clean, not too much difficulty.”

Tighe scored a 13.600 on the apparatus, however, the routine Tighe was
most looking forward to having a good showing in was parallel bars and
that did not go well.

“Unfortunately it was a disaster, it was the event I was most hopeful
for having a good showing. I had a very difficult routine, but it just
wasn’t my day,” Tighe said.

Tighe was able to bounce back for his routine on high bar, scoring a 13.85.

“I was able to turn around quickly and get myself in a good mind frame
to do a nice high bar routine to finish off the meet,” Tighe said.

Tighe will be competing in the finals starting Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Temple University will send one gymnast to Las Vegas this Thursday to
compete in the Winter Cup.

The Winter Cup is a field of the best 92 gymnast in the country.
Senior Alex Tighe is the lone recipient from Temple to receive an
invite.

Tighe looks to be able to get past the preliminaries on Thursday, and
make it to the finals on Saturday.

“The goal is to go out, hit my routines, and make the finals,” Tighe said.

The same aspirations were spoken by coach Fred Turoff.

“For the Winter Cup,” Turoff said. “I’d like [Tighe] to improve upon
his finish, and advance to the second day of competition. If he hits
his routines as he did the event finals at the West Point Open, I
think he has a good chance to do that.”

The preliminaries begin this Thursday at noon, and the finals will
begin Saturday starting at 7:30 p.m.