Pearsall Finishes 12th Among Best At NCAA Regionals

With a resume that already boasts multiple all-around titles, individual championships and a 2008 ECAC Rookie of the Year honor, freshman gymnast Maddie Pearsall added to her accomplishments a strong 12th-place finish at the NCAA Northeast Regionals on Saturday evening at Penn State’s Recreation Hall.
Pearsall, the first Cornell gymnast to qualify for the meet since 1998, ended the day with a 38.425 overall score to earn 12th out of 16 of the nation’s top all-around gymnast. Pearsall completed the routine rotation with Brigham Young University, who finished fifth of the six teams.[img_assist|nid=29833|title=Superstar|desc=Freshman Maddie Pearsall was the only Cornell gymnast to qualify for Regionals. Her personal-best beam performance helped her to a 12th-place overall finish.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
“It was definitely different [being alone] but I was with the BYU girls and they were really great,” Pearsall said. “A lot of the team was able to come and they watched from the stands. I could hear them cheering which was nice.”
Despite being younger than many of the contestants and without teammates, Pearsall performed as well as she has this year, even setting a personal-best score of 9.75 on the beam.
“[Beam] was a personal best for me, and was definitely my best event of the day,” Pearsall said. “That was really nice because that’s kind of what I’ve been focusing on since it hadn’t gone that well the past week.”
Though the other event performances may not have been personal bests, Pearsall scored enough points to finish well among the competitive field.
“Not everything went the way I hope it’d be, but overall I was definitely happy with how it went,” Pearsall said.
Pearsall will reunite with the rest of the her team for the USAG National championships at the end of this week.
“It’ll be good to be back with the team, I think that’ll calm me a little bit,” Pearsall said. “I was a little nervous at first for this. [Nationals] will be the last meet of the season, so we will just go out there with everything and lay it all out.”