Spartans upend Panthers

The old saying goes that history repeats itself, and that rang true in many ways for the… The old saying goes that history repeats itself, and that rang true in many ways for the Pitt gymnastics team on Saturday. For the second week in a row, the Panthers dropped an away meet, losing 196.575-195.25 to Michigan State.

The sense of deja vu only started there, however.

The loss was the second straight for Pitt, whose record drops to 7-4-1, but the team can take solace in the fact that it was a school-record-tying team score for the Spartans that defeated the Panthers. The previous 196.575 in Michigan State history came last year — also in a meet against the Panthers.

Alyse Zeffiro, who set a school record on the vault less than a month ago at New Hampshire with a 9.875, broke the same record again on Saturday, raising her career and school-best score to 9.925 on the event, the high mark for the meet.

“Her team really set her up, and she finished it,” said head coach Debbie Yohman of Zeffiro’s performance, “and it was very nice that the judges put the kids in the right order and she got to go last.”

But Zeffiro’s record-breaking vault wasn’t even her high score on the meet, as she also led all gymnasts on the floor exercise with a school-record-tying 9.95. Those two performances gave her 10 career scores of 9.9 or better, placing her second in school history for 9.9-plus scores, trailing only the record of 12, held by former Panther, Danielle “Freddie” Alba.

Despite Zeffiro’s heroics on the other apparatuses, the team score was hurt for the second week in a row by falls on the uneven bars. Two Panthers fell, forcing one of the two to figure into the team score, which cost Pitt at least a half-point.

“We just have to keep being aggressive,” Yohman said about the performance on the bars, “if we just sell out a little more, we’ll get it.”

The loss did little to dishearten Yohman, since the team’s score of 195.25 — their second highest of the season — will go far to help the team qualify for NCAA regionals.Qualification for the NCAA competition is done by a scoring average formula, so as Yohman put it, “[win-loss records] are mostly for the fans and to put in the paper.”

One significant difference for Pitt was the return of Diandra O’Connor to the all-around competition, something she hadn’t done since being stricken with a virus last month. Her total score of 39.025 helped her leap from 11th to eighth in career points at Pitt, with a total of 1,160.725.

“She was ready for it, but she’s not at the top of her game; you could tell that watching her face during the meet,” said Yohman of O’Connor’s condition.

Zeffiro, O’Connor and the rest of the Panthers face rival Penn State this weekend at home, and their coach was optimistic about the team’s chances of winning.

“You never know what Penn State brings in,” Yohman said. “They have some holes in their depth this year, but they always have a great program. But you never know; this could be our year.”

The meet against PSU is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Saturday at Fitzgerald Field House, and admission is free to students with their Pitt IDs.