Women’s gymnastics was edged out by ninth-ranked Denver Saturday night, losing 195.025-194.150.

The meet at Huff Hall was the first home competition of the season.

“It was tough, because we had to rest some of our starters, but the home field advantage made a big difference,” said head coach Bob Starkell. “The crowd was great today.”

Even though the women lost, they are happy with the performance against a top-10 team.

“We think we did really well,” said sophomore Cara Pomeroy. “It was really great gymnastics being performed by both sides, and overall it was a very good performance.”

Pomeroy was the individual winner of two events, beam and uneven bars, and redshirt senior captain Kara Kapernekas took home third in the all-around. Freshman Krystal Melcarek posted personal bests in vault and uneven bars, redshirt senior Sara Dumich on the balance beam, and sophomore Melissa Singer on the floor.

Starkell was surprised by the team’s performance in different events.

“We did much better than we expected on the vault, that gave us a great start,” Starkell said. “We had a bad beam day, but we finished up strong on the floor.”

The team is relishing the fact that they have a string of home meets after starting out on the road and thinks that it will provide them a boost in upcoming meets.

“We’ve been on the road for so long, and it’s nice to have more of a normal schedule – we get to sleep in our own beds, and we should take advantage of being at home,” said senior Lauren Newcomb.

Starkell said the team can use this time at home to get to the next level.

“(The athletes) should be able to clean up their routines better. You have to clean up the little stuff to get great scores, and that’s what we’ll be working on,” Starkell said.

The team has a home meet next Saturday at Huff against Illinois State and UIC. Newcomb expects better results.

“Hopefully we can build off this week, and if we focus and concentrate on the mistakes that we made at this meet before the upcoming meets, we should perform much better,” Newcomb said.