Gymnastics feels the fatigue at end of West coast trip
The Central Michigan gymnastics team completed their West coast trip late Sunday night finishing third place in a meet in Sacramento, California against Sacramento State, UC Davis, and Seattle Pacific.
According to head coach Jerry Reighard fatigue plagued the Chippewas in their 192.725 score.
CMU picked up where they left off in its previous meet Friday, a season-high score, but it was the beam exercise that cost CMU nearly 2 points.
“The Sunday meet was actually just as good until we went to our last event,” Reighard said. “We were battling through that competition and we had a lead. I think we lost 2.5 points on balance beam. It was an exhausting trip for us, we just ran out of gas.”
No CMU athlete was able to score Reighard's 9.75 benchmark score on beam. The highest was freshman Taylor Noonan’s 9.625. Sophomore Brittany Petzold scored a 8.375, while freshman Becca Druien scored a 8.975.
March 9th CMU competed in a tri-meet against No. 24 Washington and San Jose State and scored a season-best 195.300.
CMU took 2nd place, but the performance gave a confidence boost to the team according to Reighard.
“It was just a great meet there, we had a purpose and goal,” Reighard said. “That goal was to score well on that side of the country. Those judges didn’t have a preconceived notion of us, it showed our team that we have great routines and that we can score.”
The bars were the best event for CMU, score of 49.00. The team was led by senior Kristin Teubner, Petzold and sophomore Kari Dieffenderfer, all scored a 9.8 or better.
Reighard said he was proud of the entire team effort.
“I think the whole team performed well, Teubner and Petzold had great all-around days,” Reighard said. “Every event was on fire, Kari Dieffenderfer did great on bars, it was just a great team performance from top to bottom.”
CMU returns home for it’s final home meet of the season with the MAC title on the line against rival Western Michigan on Sunday.
