"If you like peeling pieces of skin the size of quarters off of your hands, bars are for you," says Haley Graham, the bad-ass gymnast in the film "Stick It," pleasantly describing the appeal of the uneven parallel bars in women's gymnastics. Brown has its own bad-ass on bars: Julia Meyer '13.
She took first place on the bars in both of Brown's meets with the University of Alaska over the long weekend, posting a season-high 9.800 on Sunday. But the team couldn't score when they needed the points most. The Bears were edged out by the Seawolves by a mere two-tenths of a point.
They didn't win either meet against the University of Alaska at Anchorage, Head Coach Sara Carver-Milne's alma mater, but the fact that the Bears held the scholarship-offering UAA squad to such a tight margin was a victory in itself.
Going into the weekend, the girls acknowledged the tough competition.
"Even though they are a scholarship school, we have a very good chance of beating them," Chelsey Binkley '11 said as the team departed.
But even a team season-high score of 189.325 wasn't enough to knock off the talented Alaska team. The Seawolves, led by vault and beam standout Lauren Agostino, swept the first three spots on vault and secured first on beam and floor.
Meyer kept the Bears alive with first on bars and a close second on the beam. A recent ECAC Rookie of the Week, she'll be a key player at this weekend's Ivy Classic Competition.
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