Published: February 03, 2008 12:27 am      

Western, NW gymnasts compete at Jeff

LAFAYETTE — The Western and Northwestern gymnastics teams took part in the Lafayette Jeff Invitational on Saturday.

Noblesville won the five-team event with a score of 103.575. No. 12-ranked Western came in second with a score of 103.075. Hobart (95.05), Northwestern (89.6) and Lafayette Jeff (74.85) rounded out the field.

Western and Northwestern combined to take five of the top 10 spots in the all-around competition. For Western, Nikki McCracken (35.925) took second, Casey Herr (34.25) came in fifth, Amanda Hudson (31.85) was seventh and Taylor Ruch (31.6) was ninth. Northwestern’s Megan Schubert (30.4) followed in 10th.

In individual events, McCracken finished first on vault (9.2) and floor (9.25), second on bars (8.575) and third on beam (8.9) and Herr was second on vault (9.15) and third on floor (9.1) to lead the Panthers.

Western coach Margie Lea noted McCracken had a solid meet, but the Panthers overall have room for improvement.

“We had some falls on beam that hurt us,” Lea said. “We really need to work on our bars, and that is what we are trying to work for now, getting bars up to where our vault and floor routines are.”

Ashley Miller had the top individual performances for the Tigers. She was fourth on vault (9.0) and on beam (8.75) and fifth on bars (8.05).

“The girls did really well,” Northwestern coach Jenna Tarkington said. “I was really proud of Olivia Ridgeway. She got her highest beam score [7.2 for 12th place]. She really did just everything that I asked and stayed on the beam. It was her best beam performance of the season. Also, Autumn Bousum had a really nice bar routine.

“If we can just kind of clean some things up and just kind of put everything together at one meet, I think we’ll be just fine. We tend to fall on one event and hit the other three. We just need to put all four events together.”

Northwestern competes Monday at Blackford.