The Lady Lion gymnastics team lost to Ohio State by 1.85 points Saturday night. But if four of its six beam competitors had not fallen, the Lady Lions would have squeaked by the Lady Buckeyes.

"We had two and a half points deducted from our score because of falls on beam," junior Carrie Arnesen said. "If we could just get our beam routines together, then we will be solid in every event."

"We definitely would have won the meet if we would have stayed on the beam, there is no doubt about that," sophomore Lynn Crane said.

The trouble didn't just start this weekend. The beam competition has posed a major setback for the Lady Lions all season.

"We had a few falls tonight, but we looked better than we did down South," Coach Judi Avener said. "We were just pitiful on the beam during our spring break trip, we were wobbling all over."

At Louisiana State, the Lady Lions scored 45.20 on the beam; at Florida they scored 45.80; and at a quad-meet with Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska, they managed only 44.90.

Ohio State outscored Penn State, 46.75-45.40, on the beam. Only two Lady Lions, Arnesen and freshman Jada Hiltabrand, stayed on the beam for the entire minute-and-a-half routine. The Lady Buckeyes had only one fall.

"For the past three workouts we have been concentrating on the beam," said Arnesen, who scored a season best 9.2. "In practice we had to do six straight perfect routines -- if we even wobbled, we had to jump down and start all over again. It helped me build a lot more confidence.

"When I am up there, I am concentrating on being aggressive and not holding back. I think about practice and try to do exactly what I did in workout."

"The repetitions we did in practice finally paid off in the meet," freshman Jada Hiltabrand agreed. "At first I thought the whole thing was crazy, but I was so glad that we did it in practice because it gave me a lot of confidence for the meet."

Hiltabrand scored a career high on the beam with a 9.35.

"Some people watered down their routines and took out foot passes and some difficulty to play it safe," Crane said. "But the tricks that we fell on were not difficult.

"I was really mad when I fell," Crane said of her first fall in Rec Hall. "The rest of my routine was probably the best routine I've ever done, but it shouldn't take a fall to be that way.