Gymnastics look to halt losing skid at Stanford

The No. 25 Wildcats (1-4) hope the return of junior Kristin McDermott to the all around, along with a healthy Kara Fry and Tenli Poggemeyer will help Arizona improve on the season-high score of 193.650 that was set on Sunday.

"We were pretty encouraged by the results we had in Georgia last Sunday," UA gymnastics coach Jim Gault said. "The thing that hurt us is that we had to count a fall in the beam and floor. If we had those two falls back, we could have beaten fourth-ranked Michigan."

As it was, the Wildcats fell five-tenths shy of beating the Wolverines in a meet that marked a great improvement over the previous weekend competition against the current No. 4 team, Utah.

"The Utah meet was a big eye-opener for our team," Gault said. "I think it forced us to come out a little more determined last weekend."

After scoring over a 48 in every event on Sunday, Arizona is beginning to gain some consistency as a team. Sophomore Kiernan Andrews, along with freshmen Mary Reiss and Fry, have come on to help the upperclassmen in the absence of All-Americans Heidi Hornbeek and Maureen Kealey.

In Sunday's vault, Andrews scored a 9.9 and Reiss added a 9.7.

Fry led Arizona with a 38.950 score in the all around.

"We have really begun to improve on our depth at each event. We need girls like Mary and Kiernan to do well for us," Gault said. "The main thing we need to concern ourselves with now is eliminating the costly falls."