On the plaque: She was a two-time Ivy Classic all-around champion, a three-time Ivy Classic champion on the uneven bars, and won three of four individual events—finishing second in the fourth—en route to all-around title at the 1994 Ivy Classic. A three-time NCAA regional qualifier, she was the first Penn woman named NCAA Regional Gymnast of the Year in 1994. She helped Penn win its first three Ivy Classic titles, was part of the first team to qualify for ECAC Championships, and graduated with program records for score in all-around, vault, uneven bars and balance beam.
 
Mary Pedersen C'94 had no idea where she stood.
 
It was the 1991 Ivy Classic, the de facto league championship, the final event of the Penn gymnastics season, taking place at the storied Palestra. And the Quakers freshman, competing in every event in the all-around, only knew her own scores, only knew that she'd been performing as well as she could all meet long. Whatever anybody else was doing was a complete unknown.
 
"You treat it just like any other big competition you've been in, so you just try your best," Pedersen said. "And all I really wanted to do was hit my routines, and then you have no control over the judges or the scoring, so it's let the cards fall as they may."
 
"This was a tactic that we both agreed to," said Tom Kovic, the head gymnastics coach at Penn from 1987-2006. "Take care of business, one event at a time, let the scores take care of themselves, the winning and the championships will all be there when the dust settles."
 
It had been a difficult meet emotionally: one of Pedersen's teammates and classmates, Mona Nedjar, had gone down with a serious knee injury, essentially eliminating any margin of error. Every vault, every pass on the mat, every move on the uneven bars, every dismount, they all counted.
 
But when the scores finally came through, Pedersen and the rest of the Quakers were elated—not only had she captured the all-around title as a freshman, but Penn had won its first-ever Ivy Classic championship in its 15th attempt.
 
"It was tremendously exciting," Pedersen said. "Not just for me in all-around, but for the team to have won. It was exciting for me in the moment—this is great we won, this is what we were working for—but for the alumni, it was something that they had been working for as well and now wanted the team to finally achieve it. So it was really great."
 
The '91 Ivy Classic was the launching point of a terrific career at Penn for Pedersen, who was part of three Ivy Classic championship-winning squads in her four years. A three-time NCAA Regional qualifier as a freshman, junior and senior, she also became the first Penn gymnast to win the NCAA Regional Gymnast of the Year award in 1994, which was also the year the Quakers qualified for the ECAC Championship for the first time.
 
For all those accomplishments and more—like being a two-time Academic All-Ivy selection and three-time team MVP—Pedersen was elected to Penn Athletics Hall of Fame as part of its 2019 class. She's only the second gymnast to get selected, 19 years after Barbara Cantwell W'82 became the first.
 
"It's a tremendous honor, something that I never expected," Pedersen said. "I'm absolutely thrilled and excited, and just feel honored that I was even selected for this. It's amazing."
 
Growing up in Little Ferry, N.J., Pedersen got into gymnastics at age 10, spurred along by a father who was an acrobat from Denmark. But it wasn't until she moved to Paragon Gymnastics in Closter and began training with Randy Pendergast at the age of 12 that her passion and ability for the sport took off.
 
Pedersen's favorite event was the uneven bars: "I think because. one, it's scary, so it's fun. And two, because I think it's not an event that comes naturally to women because it's a lot of upper-body strength that we're just not trained as a young kid in, as opposed to men. So it's not something that everyone can do, and I really enjoyed having something that I could excel at for that reason."
 
It was Pendergast, who still runs Paragon to this day, who helped Pedersen, giving her a list of schools on the East Coast with a combination of academics and gymnastics. She reached out to Kovic about continuing her gymnastics career at Penn after her high school years saw her win multiple state championships and the 1990 Garden City Games championship; Kovic, who knew Pendergast, got the recommendation, watched some film, and recruited Pedersen to become part of his team.
 
A true all-around talent, she graduated Penn with the individual program records for score in the all-around, vault, uneven bars and balance beam.
 
"Her skill level was higher than the rest of the team on pretty much every event," said Nedjar, one of Pedersen's closest friends on the team. "Not only did she perform difficult, higher-level skills, but she attacked everything with so much power that she was really a joy to watch."
 
If it weren't for injuries, Pedersen might have piled up even more accolades in her time at Penn.
 
The start of her freshman season was delayed a few weeks due to her developing mononucleosis in the preseason followed by a wrist injury. Her sophomore season was cut short by a broken bone in her foot, which required surgery. And though her junior year went well, a bout of the flu kept her from competing at her highest level in the 1993 Ivy Classic, where she finished second in the all-around.
 
"She could be bruised, swollen, and limping from an injury," Nedjar said, "but as soon as she hit the equipment, you would never know she had any kind of injury at all. She was a very hard worker in the gym and led the team by example."
 
Pedersen capped off her career even better than the way she started it, not just winning another Ivy Classic all-around championship as a senior but also sweeping the four individual events. No Penn gymnast has matched that feat since.
 
"I think, as a freshman, I was a little oblivious...I didn't understand as much of the importance of that meet, the Ivy Classic, to the Ivy League institutions," she said. "As a senior, it was something that I really wanted, as opposed to as a freshman, it was hey, this would be great and I'm going to try my best. As a senior I really did want to win it."
 
Upon her graduation with a degree in history, Pedersen went right to Villanova Law School for her J.D. She then spent two decades with the firm Powell, Trachtman, Logan, Carrle & Lombardo, then moved over to Wisler Pearlstine LLP upon the former's dissolution in 2018. Pedersen and her husband, Jay Effrece—a former athletic trainer at Penn who continues to work for the University's Student Health Services department—have two daughters, Cassidy (16) and Kiersten (13).
 
A commercial litigator who spends her days in the state and federal courts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, representing her clients in a variety of matters, Pedersen drew a comparison between the rush of performing in gymnastics with performing for a jury, aiming for a verdict instead of perfect 10s.
 
"I think the similar feeling is the ability to take in the nerves and the pressure and push it down and perform," she said. "You're always nervous when you have to get up in front of people, and the same feeling that would come over me before getting on the beam...you just take a breath, push all the nerves down and do what you do."