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.
