Jan. 10, 2003
Results
The University of Illinois Women's gymnastics team opened up its regular season at the Bahamas Breeze Invitational on Friday and finished fourth overall with a team score of 190.125. No. 9 LSU won the meet with 194.600, and was followed by No. 25 Maryland with 190.450 and Towson with 190.225.
Head Coach Bob Starkell saw some positives in his team, despite the fourth place finish.
"It's nice to get the first meet under our belt," said Starkell. "We'd been practicing really strong and having some good workouts, but I don't think the team was really quite prepared to see a quad meet with four teams on the floor, with a big crowd and a lot of noise. I think the good thing was, the mistakes they made were fixable, definitely not anything that will affect us the rest of the year. And when it came to the end of the meet they started picking it up and performing the gymnastics they usually do."
The bright spot for the Orange and Blue was their performance on the floor exercise. The Illini won the event with a score of 48.675. They were led by freshman Katie Wild, who scored a 9.825 on the event to finish fifth overall. Amanda Kaufman (9.800), Kara Kapernekas (9.750), Karen Hawley (9.725) and Michelle Buranich (9.575) all performed well on the floor as well. Kapernekas was the only Illini all-arounder in the meet. She finished fifth with a score of 37.900.
Starkell was very pleased with the performances of Wild and Kapernekas. "The experience a freshman like Katie Wild got today was great," Starkell said. "She competed three events today, did fairly well, and maybe started to get an idea of how NCAA gymnastics really works. And then looking at an all-arounder in Kara Kapernekas, she did a great job today, she had mistakes, but she probably hasn't done all-around since maybe her senior year of high school, so that was another positive thing."
Illinois' top individual finish was by Ashley Williams, who scored a 9.725 on the uneven bars to take fourth place. Kapernekas finished fifth on the bars with a 9.675.
The Illini return to action on Friday, Jan. 17 when they open up their home schedule by welcoming Auburn, Ball State and Northern Illinois to Huff Hall at 7 p.m.
