Gymnastics finishes first at Michigan-Illinois showdown
In the first annual Michigan-Illinois showdown on Sunday, the Central Michigan gymnastics team routed all three opponents to win the meet with a final score of 193.375.
Facing off against Illinois State (192.025), Illinois-Chicago (189.975) and Eastern Michigan (188.975) the Chippewas jumped out to wins in three of the four individual events and in the all-around.
Despite not reaching the desired score of 195 that CMU head coach Jerry Reighard had hoped his gymnasts would notch this weekend, he was pleased with the performances of some of his upperclassmen.
“We certainly had some highlights and, overall, I felt our team performed very well,” Reighard said. “I am extremely pleased with (Andrea) de La Garza with a 39 in the all-around.”
De La Garza paced the team with wins in the vault (9.775), beam (9.825) and the all-around (39.025). Junior Kristin Teubner continued her strong start to this season by winning the floor exercise with a score of 9.825 and finishing in third place in the all-around category (38.675).
Freshman Alyssa Wilson also made an impact in Sunday’s meet, finishing the day with a 9.775 score on the bars, something Reighard said the team was really counting on. Reighard was also able to utilize sophomore Britney Taylor in three of the meet’s events. Taylor finished the day with a third place finish on the vault, scoring a 9.725, and a 9.750 on the floor.
Reighard said his team’s inability to meet his desired score highly on not being able to utilize score-building during the events. Reighard said that falls during the beam was an example of lost momentum.
“We opened the door a few to many times, as far as getting that 195 threshold,” Reighard said. “When you look at it, we need to improve by two points, which basically is a tenth per routine.”
The beam event was one of the areas of struggle, Reighard said. With two falls in the rotation, the team struggled to score highly, fishing with a total of 48.350.
“That’s just gymnastics,” he said. “You have to be able to count on your teammate, and right now we’re just making some mistakes that are really affecting our total team score.”
However, CMU would make up for the low score in the remaining events, posting a 48.425 on the bars, a 48.375 on the floor and a 48.225 on the vault.
Senior Cheryl Conlin was held out of action this weekend due to a lower leg injury following a fall during practice last week.
Although able to participate, Reighard held the senior out of action as not to further exacerbate the injury.
Conlin tied for fist in the floor exercise (9.80) at Ball State on Jan. 14.
“We just played it really safe, so we didn’t use her,” Reighard said. “Which certainly had an effect, but we were able to put some other people in and take a look at them.”
The Chippewas return to action at 2 p.m. Sunday when they compete in their first home meet of the season at McGuirk Arena against Northern Illinois.
