An old friend and an old nemesis will welcome the women's gymnastics team when it travels to the West Coast this weekend.

The No. 7 Lady Lions (7-4, with an average team score of 191.76) will take on No. 18 Stanford (4-6, averaging a 188.05) at 7:30 tonight. The Cardinal are coached by former Penn State Assistant Coach Breck Greenwood. Then on Monday night, the team will travel to Utah for a rematch with the top-ranked Lady Utes (9-1, with a team average of 195.21).

Greenwood, an assistant coach in 1988 and 1989, recruited and coached Penn State's senior tri-captains -- Janice Rogers, Laurie Russo and Jada Hiltabrand.

"I look forward to seeing them in person, but not competing against them," Greenwood said. "It's always great to see people . . . (that you have) recruited and coached."

The Cardinal roster is a virtual fountain of youth, with four freshmen and four sophomores on the roster. Freshman Jene Elzie has recorded a team-high 38.7 on the all-around this season.

"Stanford seems to be one of those teams that will be fairly close to us scorewise," Coach Judi Avener said. "And we'll get to see how our scores are . . . standing up to the West Coast scores."

"We're doing real well," Greenwood added. "The future looks really bright. The down side is that they're young and inexperienced."

Stanford is 4-2 at home, but the Stanford coach said his young athletes are often intimidated when on the road.

"I'd rather face them here than at Rec Hall," he said. "It's pretty distracting on the road."

And the Lady Lions will find that out when they head to Provo, Utah, the heartland of women's gymnastics. The Lady Utes' smallest home crowd this season was 10,215.

Earlier this season, Utah scored a 195.05-190.65 victory over the Lady Lions at Rec Hall. In that meet, Missy Marlowe tallied a 39.4 in the all-around.

Last Monday, the Lady Utes scored a school record 196.2 against No. 3 Oregon State.

So is it an impossible mission to beat the Lady Utes?

"Absolutely," Avener said. "We want to be consistent, we want to do in the meet what we've been doing in practice."

And the Lady Lions want to accomplish the goals they failed to attain last weekend against IUP and Pittsburgh.

"Stanford and Utah -- they'll be two good meets," Rogers said. "We want to go out there and do what we've been doing all year instead of what we did (Saturday)."