Cat Classic Team Competition Posted by Brad Catternole 2/11/2004 First day of the two day event The Cat Classic is an Invitational meet held every year at the University of Missouri. The catch to this meet is that all the teams competing have cat mascots. This meet was the brainchild of retired Mizzou coach Jake Jacobsen. The meet was originally sponsored by Purina Cat Chow and now has a very fine sponsor in State Farm Insurance. This year we competed with 3 very strong teams in the University of Kentucky, Penn State and the home team University of Missouri. This is the only meet I know of in the NCAA that has a finals competition for the top 8 gymnasts on each event who qualify out o the team competition on friday night. I was a bit leary of our coming performance after a warmup that I would have to say was near the worst we have ever had. We were having trouble adjusting to everything. However after a short pep talk in the locker room we came out refocused and competed fairly well. We started with the bars and had some very nice routines by Lisa Willis, Jamie Mabray, Kacie Capra, and Kari Lords. Unfortuanately we had to count a fall and finished bars with a score of 48.5. We then went to beam and had a very nice evening not having to count a fall. Lisa willis lead us off with a 9.75 and Kari Lords ancored the lineup with a very strong 9.9 (leading the competition). Floor did their usual fantastic job and finished with Kari Lords 9.9. Vault had a season high team score of 49.3 (Helps to stick the landings, lead by Kirsten Pauga's 9.925 lay out 1/2 front. All said and done we ended the night with a team score of 196.125. Not a half bad early season road score.    Attachments (click to download)