Yale scored 186.000 in a five-way competition at Rutgers on Saturday, an improvement over last week’s struggles at the Ivy Classic, and good for a fourth place finish.

The one team the Bulldogs beat, West Chester University, was also a team they had not yet met this season, and the Golden Rams were far behind the competition with 181.325. SCSU avenged their previous loss to the Elis by scoring 187.825, while Cornell took second for the second week running with 191.550.

In the last home meet of their head coach’s career, Rutgers put up its strongest score of the season, 194.350, also the third best team score in school history. The team broke the previous school record for most wins in a season, notching its 18th.

The meet also had a record setting 1,231 attendees at the Livingston Recreation Center, many of them alumni wishing to see their coach’s final competition.

“Whenever one of [the Rutgers gymnasts] went up the crowd would explode,” Captain Sherry Yang ’11 said, “They knew it was their day and they killed it.”

For the Elis, putting together a consistent team effort was still a struggle, but Ashley O’Conner ’14 and Nicole Tay ’14 were able to significantly improve their scores in the charged environment. Performing the all-around for the first time in over a month since her ankle was injured, Tay improved her total by over three points to 36.750, good for fifth place. O’Connor scored 9.575 to tie for ninth, the highest place of any Yale gymnast for a single apparatus at the meet.

The team will compete this Friday evening at Towson, traveling with the now-familiar Rutgers team for a 7 p.m. meet.

More of Saturday’s results can be found here.