Gymnastics suffers first loss of season to Illinois
Struggling to stick landings and find confidence, the Central Michigan University gymnastics team was without its leader and No. 1 in the Mid-American Conference on beam Taylor Noonan as the Chippewas (No. 23) fell to No. 15 Illinois University on Sunday at McGuirk Arena.
With their vocal leader injured, the women had to replace Noonan in two rotations, beam and bars.
The Chippewas lost to UI 195.1-193.450.
“With Taylor being such a verbal leader, when you aren’t in the heat of the battle it is hard to have that command of the team,” CMU Head Coach Jerry Reighard said. “Everybody is concerned when you don’t have your national qualifier on beam. More than one person thought that they had to make up the difference with her out of the lineup. I saw reckless beam today.”
The status of Noonan's right knee is unclear at this time. She will be evaluated this week.
The beam rotation score was one of the worst that CMU has seen in quite some time. The Chippewas' final score on the beam was 47.45. Last year's MAC champions did not score worse than 48.125 in that category.
Three of the five gymnasts scored lower than a 9.45 against Illinois on the beam.
The CMU women also struggled in Noonan's second premier event: The bars.
Counting two falls, CMUs scored 48.575, compared to last season's high of 49.475.
“Confidence was a problem. That is something a coach cant give his team. They have to build that within themselves,” said Reighard.
The Chippewas struggled on landings after the dismounts in the meet, something they had problems with in their first meet of the year against Wisconsin Eau-Claire.
“I’m not sure we stuck any landings, there’s 20 landings, that’s 2 points and that’s the meet,” Reighard said.
CMU had to play catch up after their first event on vault and fell deeper into the hole from there.
Reighard veterans said they are not used to playing catch up.
“It was tough losing Taylor, it was a tough practice on Friday. We're here we have her back and we’re going to it for her and come out and get the scores we know we need,” said senior Halle Moraw.
The Chippewas will next face Seattle Pacific and MAC opponent Eastern Michigan University in a tri-meet at 7 p.m. on Saturday at McGuirk Arena.
