Gymnastics opens the season dominating competition
On the day Central Michigan gymnastics returning athletes received their Mid-American Conference title rings from last year they opened this year’s season by dominating the competition.
The Chippewas won events early and often, finishing with a final score of 192.525. Centenary College was second with a score of 186.950, Wisconsin-Eau Claire (178) and Wisconsin-La Crosse (182.375) also competed at McGuirk Arena Sunday afternoon.
The Chippewas goal for each event to score at least a 9.7. Senior Kristen Teubner, and sophomore Brittany Petzold both started the out scoring above that on the vault. Sophomore Kari Dieffenderfer was nearly perfect scoring a 9.9. CMU finished the first event with a total score of 48.525 on the vault.
“I didn’t plan on doing a 9.9, I just planned on doing my vault,” Dieffenderfer said. “I was just extremely pleased with how it turned out.”
The Chippewas moved onto the bars during the next rotation and were led by Petzold who scored a 9.825. She hit her goal to be over 9.7 to take the pressure off the freshman.
“We depend on the freshmen a lot, they are half of our team and they did very well up there,” Petzold said. “After the bars, I feel like the pressure went down a little bit.”
Teubner and freshmen Rebecca Druien followed Petzold’s lead scoring above 9.7. The Chippewas totaled a score of 48.600 on the bars.
Freshmen Taylor Noonan and Kylie Fagan were the only Chippewas that scored above 9.7 on the bars.
Injuries kept some CMU athletes out.
“If you knew anything about what we’ve gone through in the last month, we’ve had some injuries that have forced us to lose some people,” Reighard said. “We really did well today, things came together like I hoped they would.”
CMU had the highest individual score for every event except the floor.
