CEDAR CITY, Utah - After spending a little more than two hours on the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday afternoon, the No. 11 Pioneers made the 2 hour and 45 minute drive to Cedar City, Utah. This weekend marks the first of two trips the Pioneers will make to Southern Utah's campus this season, as the Western Athletic Conference will host its conference meet here on March 23.

Junior Melodie Pulgarin Linero (Barcelona, Spain) celebrated her 24th birthday with her teammates on Thursday, her first trip to the Las Vegas Strip. Several of the gymnasts, including Pulgarin Linero, had their trip highlighted by the famous New York New York Roller Coaster.

"It was an awesome experience," Pulgarin Linero said. "There are so many things in Vegas, and as we were walking, I just couldn't stop looking around with a smile on my face. If you told me three years ago that I would be in Vegas, I would have said 'yeah right'.

"There are really big roller coasters at the amusement parks in Barcelona. I didn't know that there was going to be a loop on this one, and I was kind of scared about that. I loved roller coasters like that while I was young , but now that I'm a little bit older, for some reason I don't enjoy them as much. When I asked if there was a loop after I got in line, they said yes, but I was already paying. We sat down and I expected to have a bar near my shoulders to grab, but this didn't have that. It was so, so good, but was so, so scary."

Pulgarin Linero is set to compete in three events on Friday, being scratched from Denver's beam lineup due to a finger injury. The Spanish international is coming off a 39.125 all-around score at last week's Burnsley Invitational, her fifth score over 39.000 in her last six all-around appearances. The Pioneer junior has tallied 10 scores of 9.800 or higher in her 17 routines this season.

"I think we are doing pretty well as a team so far," Pulgarin Linero said. "The good thing about this team is, even if we don't have our best meet, we can still put together a good score. That says a lot about the potential that this team has. Away meet scores are important, but we try not to focus on scores as much. We focus on making improvements in each meet. If we all do our jobs, we'll get the scores that we want."

Denver is off to its best five-meet start in program history, improving two spots in the national rankings back to No. 11 with a 195.665 average. The Pioneers will get their first look at a Regional Qualifying Score after Friday's meet. With a 196.000, the Pioneers would have an RQS of 195.545, 1.050 highest than its first RQS a year ago. Tonight's Western Athletic Conference matchup is Denver's first road WAC meet. The meet will begin at 7 p.m. MT. 

-EXPERIENCE DENVER ATHLETICS- 

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