Gymnastics wins!
Team takes 1st place in NAIGC
The MIT Gymnastics teams competed at the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs (NAIGC) championships last weekend in Richmond, Va. The women’s team took first place overall in the team competition. The men’s team did not have enough entrants to enter the team competition but still performed well.
In the team competition, the top four individual scores for four events (vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercises) are totaled for an overall score. The MIT women’s team — consisting of Julia C. Zimmerman ’09, Karis E. Stevenson ’12, Kristen D. Watkins ’11, Lindsay M. Sanneman ’14, and Zara K. Karuman ’13 — scored 150.025, beating runner-up Texas A&M University by one point. MIT finished ahead of seven other teams despite having only five competitors, the fewest of any other school in the team competition.
Zimmerman, who accounted for 38.15 of the Engineers’ points, finished first overall in the individual all-around competition by a tenth of a point. She placed first in uneven bars, and fourth, eighth, and ninth in vault, balance beam, and floor, respectively. Karuman placed third in vault and fourth in floor, scoring 37.875 for the team.
The MIT men’s delegation, consisting of Jacob T. Shapiro ’11 and Brett S. Lazarus ’12, did not participate in the team competition, but Shapiro and Lazarus finished third and fourth, respectively, in individual competition. Shapiro finished first in rings and third on pommel horse, while Lazarus finished in the top four in four events.
The men’s and women’s gymnastics teams were among the eight programs to lose varsity status in spring 2009, and they currently compete against other schools as a club team.