Houston Baptist’s duo of Alfonso Rodriguez and Dawn Mulholland put on a divine first-place performance Friday night during the Second Annual Southwest Airlines/Huskie National Mixed Pairs Invitational at Chick Evans Field House.

Rodriguez and Mulholland not only combined their efforts for a 75.95 tally in defeating Arizona State’s Karli Urban-Paul Linne team (74.85 final score), but the Houston duo also set 11 of the 16 new meet records set at Friday night’s showing.

NIU’s team of Michelle Rawlake-Oivind Haarstad finished third with a 54.20 score and was followed by the NIU tandem of Angie Tasetano and Bernd Buchmuller (53.80).

The invitational was a unique one in that it combined the scores of male and female gymnasts. Only the top five couples reached the third round, and the top two couples battled for the blue ribbon in the final round.

“I thought it was a great meet,” said NIU men’s coach Chuck Ehrlich. “Obviously the two best couples won. It was great to see one of our couples get third.”

Mulholland and Rodriguez gave their competition no time to waste as they led the 10-couple meet in the first round with a combined score of 19.10 on the floor exercise. That was followed by two 18.95 performances. While ASU’s Urban and Linne won the fourth round over HBU (19.10-18.95), it was not enough to catch up with the Houston Baptist pair.

“We really couldn’t do much better than second since Alfonso was just awesome and Dawn was really solid,” Linne said. “I enjoyed the whole meet. It was fun and nerve-racking, even though we were in second the whole way.”

NIU women’s coach Bobbie Cesarek said she thought the meet went really well, and plans are already being discussed for next year.

“It was thoroughly a fun meet for both the spectators and the competitors,” Cesarek said. “For two months to go before the season starts, they (NIU) did a fine job.”