March 21, 1998
LOS ANGELES - The Arizona State women's gymnastics team, ranked No. 7 in the country, scored a 194.825 and a third-place finish at the 1998 Pacific-10 Championships in front of 2,078 fans at Pauley Pavilion on the campus of UCLA. The result is an improvement on last year's sixth-place finish in Tucson.
"I think we were one bars routine short of a championship," said ASU Head Coach John Spini. "I was pleased with the overall effort considering we were playing catch-up the entire night."
In the Devils' first apparatus of the evening, the vault, the Devils finished with a third-place finish of 48.825. High scorers for ASU were sophomore Amy Shelton (9.825), senior Meagan Wright (9.775) and junior Lisa Vincijanovic (9.775).
In the bars competition the Devils fell on two performances, having to count one of them, en-route to a 48.125, their third-lowest bars score of the year. Giving ASU its best score in the event was Wright, who scored a 9.825, good for eighth place.
In the ensuing event of the evening, the balance beam, ASU tied its season best with a first-place finish of 48.975. Highlighting the team's effort in the event were Vincijanovic and senior Kim Keever who tied for fourth-place in the competition with a 9.85.
In the floor exercise the Devils finished in second place with a 48.9. Leading ASU were sophomores Elizabeth McNabb (9.925) and Elizabeth Reid, who placed second and third respectively.
The Sun Devils return to action in two weeks when they host the 1998 NCAA Midwest Regional. The regional will be comprised of the top-seven teams in the Midwest, vying for an automatic berth in the NCAA Championships, being held April 16-18 in Los Angeles, Calif.