Gymcats head into hostile territory

The Arizona gymnastics team will travel to Tempe this weekend to compete on Sunday at 3 p.m. against rival Arizona State in hopes of keeping its three-meet winning streak against ASU (1-3) alive.

The No. 24 Gymcats (0-2) defeated ASU last year, in Tucson, 195.75-195.25, and hope to continue that trend this time around.

“”We are making vast improvements. We have obviously a very young team and it’s a little bit like a deer in headlights when we first came out at our first meet,”” said assistant coach Colleen Johnson. “”I think we are going to continue to grow and surprise a lot of people.””

Tennis swings into spring season

This weekend, the Arizona tennis teams will start their spring 2010 campaign at home with the women facing UC-Davis and UC-Santa Barbara today and Saturday, respectively, while the men face Montana State on Sunday.

The men’s squad starts the season ranked No. 24 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) poll — the same spot they finished in last spring after losing to Texas A&M in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The current No. 24 ranking is the highest the men have started since current head coach Tad Berkowitz took over the team five seasons ago.

Track to challenge Stanford and Cal

The UA men and women’s track and field teams are heading to Albuquerque, N.M., for the 2010 Cherry and Silver Invitational on Saturday.

Arizona will test their mettle against Pacific 10 Conference schools California and Stanford as well as the University of New Mexico, and some athletes are unattached in its first invitational of the season.

“”Coming into this meet, we’ll get a better picture of where we are as a team because we’ll take out sprinters and put them into their true events,”” said head coach Fred Harvey.

The meet will also feature the distance team and triple jumpers for the first time all season.

— compiled by Nathan Comerford, Kevin Nadakal and Galo Mejia