With all great athletic teams, improvement is always possible. Although the No. 15 Penn State women's gymnastics team (2-4) came away with a victory in its home opener Saturday night, it discovered that there is room to grow.

"There is definitely room for improvement," senior Katie Rowland said. "It is only the second meet of the season and we need to get all of our difficulty and hit it when it counts." Senior co-captain Leslie Bair, who is recovering from a knee injury, returned to the lineup to compete on the balance beam.

"We just decided on Friday to put me in," Bair said smiling. "Beam is easy because it is not as much pounding as the other events, so we will have to take it step by step and ease my way into floor, bars and vault." The day-by-day improvement of Bair's knee can only benefit the team in the weeks to come.

"She is really consistent and a great start-off girl on beam for us," Rowland said. "Hopefully she will be back in a few more events in the weeks to come."

Besides Bair, the team also experienced improvement in the freshman ranks. Meredith Hoover led the way for the newcomers by scoring a 9.850 on the balance beam that was good enough for second place in the event. She also added a 9.750 in the floor exercise.

"Meredith did an awesome job tonight," Rowland said. "She looked really good and really confident and [the freshmen] are just having fun out there and that is what we tell them to do and I think they are just loving this atmosphere of collegiate gymnastics."

For some gymnasts, not much improvement is needed on certain events. For instance, senior Nikki Bongiovanni scored a 9.900 on the balance beam, which earned her first place honors in the event. Rowland also earned first place in the floor exercise with a 9.900 respectively.

"[Rowland's] floor was tremendous, she over-rotated a little on her triple-full because she stepped back, but it wasn't a big mistake and it was really not noticeable by anyone but us, but she could do that better," Penn State women's gymnastics coach Steve Shephard said. "For this time of the year, she is looking really good." One area that the coaching staff would like the gymnasts to improve on is their mental toughness.

"I think it is just mental at this point and not a matter of being physically able or capable of doing the routines," Shephard said. "They just put a little too much pressure on themselves and we were a little tight and we made some mental mistakes today."

With that in mind, spectators definitely realized that the potential for this team is there, but the gymnasts just have to learn to act on their abilities.

"I just hope that they realize the potential that they have because we definitely did not live up to that potential and I hope that they see ... use that as motivation in the gym and then in their performance in the future," Penn State assistant coach Jessica Bastardi said.