The spark in Carrie Arnesen's gymnastics career started in a challenge when she was in elementary school. She watched her father walk up and down the stairs on his hands. Wanting try it herself, Arnesen walked from the living room to the dining room on her hands for a quarter from her father. Even better, she got fifty cents when she made it back.

She has been a gymnast ever since. But now, as captain of the women's gymnastics team and its only senior, her goals are not so individualistic.

Arnesen has experience on all four events, but has worked mainly one or two events in each of her college years. Last year, she primarily competed on balance beam, her least liked event, because that's where the team needed more strength. Also, injuries prevented her from working out on the uneven bars.

This season, she has concentrated on the vault to help strengthen the team.

"Of my four years here, I've always been the fifth or sixth person ranked," Arnesen said. "But, I was always the one that was consistently (getting) a 9.1 or a 9.2 on beam or a 9.0, but I wasn't one of the top performers. I wanted something where I was going to be where they needed me, where the score was going to be there every time."

In the preseason, Arnesen started working on a relatively new vault to her, called a full-on, full-off. She had some on and off experience on it in both high school and college. The highest score possible on the routine is a 9.9.

"You can get a lot of deductions on it, too, though. You don't get as much repulsion because it's not a very dynamic vault," Arnesen said. "It's twisting, it's not as much double flipping.

"I think I worked it my sophomore year. But, I never competed it. I competed a full-line handspring off and that was it. And my run ... I didn't have the right timing for it at that time."

Arnesen's diligence in the preseason paid off when she hit a score of 9.55 on the vault in the team's second meet this season. Following teammates Allison Barber's 9.7 record-tying score and Lisa Mallios' 9.65, Arnesen captured third place in the meet and earned her highest collegiate vault score by .30.

"She worked very hard," Coach Judi Avener said. "She did countless renditions of that vault. She really took control of that situation, she was determined to learn that vault." Not only did Arnesen achieve her personal best and place her name in the record book as a high vault scorer, but she proved to herself that she was a significant part of the team.

"I really do look up to Carrie," junior Kira Rohm said. "She's been through so much with this team."

As captain, Arnesen said she works as a mediator between Avener and the team to pull everyone together.

"One of her deep strengths is that, really deep down, she cares," Rohm said.

"She really helped me a lot to fit in and learn what you're supposed to do," freshman Rene Lyst said. "Anytime we have a question, we go to Carrie. She's been really helpful, she's a great person."

Arnesen said that in the preseason the gymnasts focused on themselves, which caused some of the freshmen to feel alienated. She told them to wait until the season starts to feel closer, when the focus was on the team.

"I told them that it's just going to happen, it'll come. Right now, you may feel alienated, but maybe I do too. It's not just you, because you're freshmen," Arnesen said. "When Christmas came, when we were all here by ourselves, everyone just pulled together."

Arnesen, who competed on a club team in Georgia during her high school days, said she was recruited by Penn State late, after she had narrowed her top choices. But, after she met the coaches and team, saw a Rec Hall meet and heard the Penn State crowd shout, "We are Penn State!" she decided to become a Lady Lion.

"I said I want to be on a team that is going to be on the rise where I can feel like I'm a part of it," she said. "I helped it to get up there and that's what I want to do with this team. I want to leave with the team going up. And I see (us) doing that."

"She's been to the top with this team and to the bottom with this team," Avener said. "She wants to go out as a winner."

At times, however, Arnesen has wanted to quit gymnastics, mainly in the beginning of her gymnastics career.

"My parents were always there. They never pushed me to stay in," Arnesen said. "There was a time, they sat me down and said if you want to quit gymnastics, do it now, because I was really getting seriously into the sport.

But she stuck with it, even through the past four years at Penn State, where she has had to adjust to four different assistant coaches since her freshman year.

The switch from a club team to a college team was a big change. Independent club teams tend to emphasize the individual more than the team since gymnasts usually go without a team, to regional and national competitions.

"When I was in club gymnastics, my coach was always right by me, telling me what to do and everything," Arnesen said. "When I came here I needed help, I needed guidance and having to change different (assistant) coaches ... it was hard.

Arnesen said her personal gymnastics goal is to try to perfect her vault and keep her score above a 9.4 or 9.5. Although the uneven bars are her favorite event, she does not expect to compete on them since a shoulder problem has hampered her strengthening the routine.