Feb. 4, 2012

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Final Scores

HAMDEN, Conn. - The Maryland acrobatics and tumbling team shattered the conference team tumbling record Saturday in its win at Quinnipiac. The Terrapins (1-0) beat Quinnipiac (0-1) 284.540 to 274.855 in both teams' season opener.

The Terrapins, who led the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association in tumbling last season, broke out the 2012 season with a bang Saturday. Their tumbling round score of 57.45 beat the previous NCATA record of 56.420, which they set March 26, 2011 at Quinnipiac.

"Overall, I'm thrilled with how we came out at our first meet this early in the season," Laura Chiriaco said after her head coaching debut. "I'm so proud of the difficulty we were able to execute to bring our start values up to be significantly higher than they were at the intrasquad meet in December. Our team has come such a long way in a short amount of time."

"As for our tumbling performance, we talked to the team before and we knew that we didn't have much of a difference in our start values from Quinnipiac's. They knew they had to really execute their skills and they did exactly what we asked them to. We couldn't be more pleased with the way the executed their tumbling."

Maryland won five of the six events for the win. They started off in the compulsories round, which the Terrapins pulled out with a 38.60 to 38.50 advantage. In the second round, acro, the Terrapins began to pull away. Their event score of 27.59 to 24.40 gave them a four-point lead going into the pyramid heat.

The Terps narrowly won the pyramid round, 28.00 to 27.90 for a 94.19 to 90.80 lead at halftime.

Coming out of the break, they began with the tosses round. Quinnipiac edged Maryland, 27.90 to 27.85, to win that one event.

In the fifth round, the tumbling round, senior Margaux Cooper and junior Brooke Grohol each notched near-perfect scores of 9.9 on their solo passes in the open and 6-element heats, respectively.

Heading into the sixth and final heat, the team routine, Maryland held a 179.490 to 175.025 advantage. The Terps performed a solid team routine to win that event 105.050 to 99.830.

"The routine was executed the best we have done up to this point, which is exciting to me. It's only going to get better from here on out and we have several weeks before our next meet to make it even more perfect," Chiriaco said.

Next, the Terrapins will welcome Quinnipiac to College Park for a 7 p.m. meet on March 9.