Gymnastics uses 'milestone' day on the bars to win meet
A solid performance on the uneven bars helped propel gymnastics to a 195.050-193.100 win over the University of New Hampshire on Friday night.
The bars were the strong suit for CMU, with a score of 49.075 and five-of-six gymnasts scoring a 9.8 or higher.
The team first performed on vault and scored a 48.475. Head coach Jerry Reighard said the energy level was down in the beginning, but, when the Chippewas went to bars, things started coming together.
“Forty-nine on an event is certainly a milestone,” Reighard said. “It’s a mark that every coach wants to achieve, and right from the first two freshmen that started out on bars, it became very evident that we were going to have a great day on bars.”
Sophomore Kylie Fagan had the highest score on bars with a 9.850, and she said the team plans to keep aiming for those high scores.
“We’re becoming very consistent," she said. "In our last two meets on bars and beams we’re six-for-six. It’s a good feeling that we aren’t aiming to hit, we’re aiming for 9.8s. We aren’t trying to stay on the beam, we are trying to get 9.8s on the beam.”
Sophomore Becca Druin, the team’s only all-around competitor for the meet, finished right behind Fagan with an 8.25.
Druin scored a 9.575 on vault, 9.750 on beam, and a 9.625 for her floor routine.
Reighard noted the team typically has a trio of all-around competitors, but, this year, things have been shaken up.
“The depth that we have on this team is making it almost impossible for an all-arounder to hit all four events and stay in,” Reighard said. “You have to remember Brittany Petzold and Halle Moraw; we aren’t pushing them on bar, because they’ve had some surgeries. I think it’s going to be very tough for them to push themselves into all four events.”
The team finished with a 48.875 on beam and tied the Wildcats with a 48.625 on the floor.
Sophomore Taylor Noonan and junior Emily Heinz captured the top scores on beam with 9.8s.
Although Noonan was at the top for her scores in beam, she was the only one on her team to receive below a 9.8 on bars.
Noonan said she knows there will always be room for improvement within herself and among her teammates, and learning from each performance,to strive to be better, is part of the fun.
“That’s what drives us to get into the gym on Monday,” she said. “We know what we have to fix, and we’re excited to go back in the gym and fix it, because we know we can do better.”
CMU will be back on the bars and the mat at 7 p.m. Friday Jan. 18 when Mid-American Conference competition starts up at Ball State.
