The music was blasting and the gymnasts threw out T-shirts to the crowd at McGonigle Hall, as Temple hosted one of its two home meets this season. The No. 12 Owls finished the day with a final team score of 421.300 good enough for a second place finish in front of No.11 conference- rival William & Mary (417.600), and behind the No.1 team in the country, Penn State (446.550).
Senior Allan Malone led the way for the Owls. The native of Cookeville T.N., placed third in the all-around with a score of 83.100.
“I thought the meet was pretty good,” Malone said. “We had a few mess-ups here and there, but all together we ended up pretty strong.”
Malone said he was most pleased with his routine on high bar, in which he scored a 14.750.
“[High bar] really stuck out to me, that was my second best score of my career,” Malone said.
Fresh off of the Winter Cup in Las Vegas, senior Alex Tighe also had a very respectable meet. Tighe placed second on parallel bars with a score of 14.850.
“[Parallel bars] is one of the hardest being done in the country right now,” Tighe said. “And I wasn’t able to practice really well all week because going to Las Vegas really just wore my body down, and I came here knowing I needed to have a good day. Luckily the cards played out and I was able to do that and hit my routine.”
Although Coach Fred Turoff realized his team could have performed better, he said he was still very pleased with the meet’s outcome.
“We still had a number of giveaways today and some failures of routine performance,” Turoff said. “But overall I have to be happy, it was our highest team score so far, we had a real good battle with William & Mary it went neck and neck, and we got to see the top team in the country [Penn State] as well.”
Turoff also commented on the large crowd that came out to watch the night’s meet.
“This was the biggest crowd that we had at a gym meet in many years and that was a very nice thing to have,” Turoff said.
Senior Brett Statman was out for the meet as he nursed a sore back. His status for the next meet is still unknown.
The Owls will compete next Sunday, March 3, at SUNY Brockport, starting at 2 p.m.
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