Finishing off her career with a national championship run, senior Andrea Arlotta placed 16th… Finishing off her career with a national championship run, senior Andrea Arlotta placed 16th in the all-around competition Thursday at the NCAA finals.

As the only Panther to compete in the all-around in the NCAA championship, Arlotta scored a 38.8 last week in Salt Lake City. The last Panther to even make it to the competition was Leila Tait, who won the regional balance beam title in 2005, making her eligible for the NCAA nationals.

Arlotta faced some of the top teams in the country in her first and only session of the three-day competition, including No. 1-ranked Florida. She also faced Georgia, who won the entire competition on Saturday, and Nebraska, who made it to the final four.

For the NCAA competition, the lead all-around competitor, as well as the top three teams in each session, advance to the second day of competition. From there, the top four competitors in each event from Thursday move on to Saturday’s finals.

Although she fell short of making it any further in the competition, Arlotta was happy to finally compete this year – her sophomore year she fell on the beam and her junior year she couldn’t compete because of a knee injury.

“It was definitely fun,” she said. “I was a little nervous at first – I had never been to NCAA nationals, and I was nervous that people were going to be like ‘Oh, she doesn’t deserve to be here.’ But I felt good, and I felt very deserving to be there once I saw other people.

“When I was being recruited, a lot of schools dropped me because I had major knee surgery, and they got to see me [at the competition],” she said. “It felt really good to see them to show them that I could do it without them – I could get there without them. I didn’t need them to recruit me to be successful.”

Arlotta kicked off the meet with the uneven bars, scoring a 9.725 and finishing eighth after the first rotation. She landed in 29th place for the event when the session was over.

Arlotta scored a 9.7 on the balance beam, which was one of her five highest scores for the season on the beam. Overall, she tied for 34th in this event.

Arlotta moved on to the floor exercise competition where she was deducted a tenth of a point for stepping out of bounds. She scored a 9.625 for the event and came in 38th overall, a somewhat low score for her on this event. She went into the meet averaging a 9.715.

“I felt like I got maybe a little underscored on some events but on other events it was fine,” she said. “Like on floor they told me I stepped out of bounds which is an automatic one-tenth reduction, and some of the coaches who were standing right there said I didn’t step out.”

Another possible reason Arlotta may have been scoring on the low side was that she was following the best girl from some of the best teams in the nation in each event.

“Each individual all-arounder goes after a team and after their best girl in the lineup,” Arlotta explained. “Some of these teams that make it to nationals are really good so [the judges] probably compared me to the last girl in the lineup.

“It’s just how gymnastics is, it’s very political,” she said. “I guess a lot of sports are.”

Ending her day on the vault, Arlotta felt “it was probably one of [her] best vaults of the year.” She notched a 9.75 and came in 35th place overall for that event.

Arlotta was coming off a fourth place finish at the NCAA regionals last month with an all-around score of 39.05. There she was also named the 2007 Northeast Region Gymnast of the Year.

She leaves behind quite a legacy at Pitt. She has the record for the leading scorer with 1,609.18 points, and she was the Eastern Atlantic Gymnastics League Gymnast of the Week three times this season alone. She also won the league title on the uneven bars, and was a 14-time All-EAGL selection.

“It was a nice way to end my career,” she said. “It’s just been my goal, and last year I got injured and the year before I fell on beam, so it was a nice way to end it.”