Teubner leads gymnastics to win at Ball State
Junior Kristin Teubner claimed three event wins on Friday to lead the Central Michigan gymnastics team to a 193.500-190.375 victory against Ball State in Muncie, Ind.
Claiming the all-around, vault and floor exercise, Teubner tallied a career-high in the AA with a 38.975. Her event-high came in the floor with a 9.800 and she finished the vault with a score of 9.775. Her other two events (bars and beam) saw her place in the top three in scoring.
Head coach Jerry Reighard said Teubner’s performance was something he saw coming soon after she arrived on campus.
“She’s really developing that competitive nature that we saw a glimpse of as a freshman,” Reighard said. “But she is really driving to be the best in our conference and I think that really showed (Friday) with her efforts.”
The win helped the team get off to a 1-0 start in the Mid-American Conference. The Chippewas won the Sacramento State quadrangular on Jan. 8.
“It is always a big deal for us, we're still undefeated so there is still a lot of positives,” Reighard said.
The team began on the bars finishing with a 48.200 total behind matching 9.725 scores from freshmen Brittany Petzold and Alyssa Wilson.
Teubner tied for first place on the valut with a season-high 9.775, while sophomore Brittany Taylor rounded out CMU scorers with a 9.725 score, good enough for third place.
The third event saw Chippewas on the floor, where senior Cheryl Conlin and Teubner both scored a 9.800 to lead the team to a total of 48.475.
The last run put CMU on the beam, a rotation that the team has performed well on in the first few meets. But mistakes throughout the run cost valuable points.
“We had a lot of mistakes," Reighard said. "None of them were big mistakes, but that’s the nature of our sport, and the hardest part for a gymnast is learning to get that competitive head back where it needs to be."
Teubner again led the team in scoring on that event, but her 9.750 tally was only good enough for third place. The team did finish with a final score of 48.350.
Reighard said some little mistakes did creep into his gymnasts' final run, and some of the 9.7 scores could have and should have been closer to the 9.85 range.
“When we got into that competitive aspect we reverted back to safety rather than aggression,” Reighard said. “And we need to be aggressive on everything.”
The team will look to get back into that aggressive nature next weekend when they travel to Normal, Ill., on Jan. 23 to compete against 2-0 Illinois State.
