The Penn State women's gymnastics team begins each home meet by kissing the Nittany Lion at the shrine for good luck.

This weekend, a kiss to the Lion might ensure the team's success against Cornell, West Virginia and No. 2 Michigan at 7 tomorrow night in Rec Hall.

The Lions came off a second place finish last week and are hoping to improve the team scores this weekend.

Senior Jennifer Orlando stressed the importance of staying focused on team goals and perfecting mistakes from the previous meet.

"We had to count a few low scores," Orlando said. "Landing mistakes take off tenths of points and we need to save all the tenths we can."

The team's goal is to earn 24-24, meaning six gymnasts should receive high scores in all four events.

Only the five highest scores are counted, but it is important for all the girls to do well so that even the lowest score remains relatively high.

"We had a really good first meet -- had lots of depth," Orlando said. "We need to realize we can go much further with our talents."

Penn State women's gymnastics head coach Steve Shephard said the team has a good energy level.

He added that gymnasts need to make their performance in meets as well as they perform in practice.

"We need to focus on execution, no falls," Shephard said.

The team experienced difficulties on the bars and vault landings last weekend.

Shephard noted that his team had very uncharacteristic mistakes last weekend, including one by one of the team's best bar performers Katie Perett, who fell off the bars and had to start over several times.

Senior Lisa Clark, winner of the Ann Carr award for the most inspirational performance of the night, said that the team is going to do "awesome" this weekend.

"We don't look at scores during meets," Clark said. "We just wait till the outcome of the meet."

Clark said the team avoids the scoreboard during the meet so that each gymnast's emotions are not affected.

She also said that the first home meet was good because the team got rid of any jitters

"The first meet has room for mistakes, but we know we can do better," Clark said.

The team is more confident and has practiced cleaning up the mistakes that lower scores.

The team will be competing without junior Amie Olaes who tore her ACL while dismounting from the beam one week before the Lions' first meet.

Still, the Lions are hopeful that they can clean up some of their past mistakes this weekend.