Florida Gators

Melanie Sinclair knew it was going to be a good day when she woke up this morning. That feeling turned out to be prophetic as the All-American's 10.0 on the uneven bars led the No. 5 University of Florida gymnastics team (3-1, 2-1 SEC) to a 195.925-193.85 win Friday over Kentucky (1-3, 0-3 SEC) in front of a crowd of 8,019 for the Third Annual Gators Link to Pink meet.

“Actually this morning I woke up and I honestly felt so good that I felt I could do anything today. When I was warming up on bars, everything just came so fluidly. It was easy to focus on the handstands, it was easy to just take it step by step and whenever it's like that you just have to do your thing.”

And her thing tonight was matching her collegiate- and school-record bars mark for the third time in her career. It was her second 10.0 wearing pink, as her first perfect bars mark came in 2007 when Florida played host to its first Gators Link to Pink event on Feb. 16, 2007. She is the fourth Gator to earn the perfect mark on bars and the only one to post a 10.0 on multiple occasions.

UF junior Maranda Smith set her collegiate bars best to share second overall with teammate Corey Hartung at 9.90.

UF Head Coach Rhonda Faehn saw the possibility of a 10.0 during warm-up.

“That (10.0) was just unbelievable. When she was actually warming up, I went over to her. She was so aggressive and hitting every handstand. That's the area where she always feels like she needs to hit. I said, 'That's 10.0 material right there,'” Faehn said. “She did the bar routine and it was amazing. She hit every handstand. She scored a couple of 10.0's her first year here. She's capable of it every time she steps up.”

Florida started off the meet with strong performances on vault and bars. The Gators also saw their season-high individual vault mark move to 9.95 tonight with Smith's performance on the event. Since joining the competitive vault lineup for the Gators' second meet of the season, Smith had led UF on the event. Her collegiate-best mark gave Smith her second vault title of the last three meets. Freshman Elizabeth Mahlich matched her collegiate-best of 9.85 to share second on the event with Sinclair.

Hartung picked up her first balance beam title of the season, matching UF's season-best mark of 9.90. It was the 15^th beam win for the three-time All-American on the event. But for the second consecutive meet, Florida was forced to count a fall toward its beam team total as no other Gator posted a mark above 9.80 on the event. The runner-up beam position Friday was shared at 9.75 by Kentucky's Hillary Ferguson and Heather Hite.

Hartung knows the Gators have the ability to perform well on beam, just like they did in the opening meet of the season.

“Our bodies know what to do and we are physically able to do it every single time. We train it perfectly everyday,” Hartung said. “It is just about mentally preparing ourselves better before we compete.”

Although not happy with the team's beam performance, Faehn thought the team showed improvement in their attack of the event this week.

“We have definitely trained a lot harder in the gym this week and we've made a lot of corrections. I feel like we made aggressive mistakes today instead of going into it like we're afraid of it and that's the first step,” Faehn said. “Last week we had an awful meet, making silly mistakes and performing cautiously so going aggressive is better. That's just the next step to hitting your routines perfect.”

Sinclair picked up her second event win when she matched her season-best of 9.875 to top Friday's floor competition. It was her third floor title as a Gator. Smith posted her third top-two floor finish of the season with her runner-up mark of 9.85. Mahlich shared third at 9.825 with UK's Ferguson.

The all-around win went to Sinclair, as she matched her season-best of 39.45 for her second win of 2009 and her fifth as a Gator. Hartung was second at 39.325 and Mahlich took third (39.15).

Faehn saw some improvement tonight and especially liked the Gators' top performances. Florida continues to have some gymnasts performing in limited roles due to injuries and Faehn is hoping those days will soon be behind the team to help establish consistency.

“We definitely did better on vault and bars. I was so proud of Maranda (Smith). Maranda is really competing aggressively like a star and she's competing confidently. That is wonderful to see. It was also wonderful to see Melanie's 10.0 and Corey (Hartung) winning beam, which she's capable of doing every time,” Faehn said. “We could have done better on floor. We have to get Amanda (Castillo) back into the floor and vault lineup. Once we're able to get our athletes on track and in the lineup, we're going to start to see some consistency with our scores.”

Tonight's meet will air tape-delayed Sunday, Feb. 8 at 12:30 p.m. on SUN Sports.

Next week, Florida travels to No. 10 LSU (6-2, 1-2 SEC) to face its fourth top-10 opponent of the 2009 season. The meet is Friday, Feb. 6 at 8 p.m. ET. The meet will air tape-delayed on SUN Sports Saturday, Feb. 14 at 4 p.m.