Gymnastics near season-high in home victory against Alaska-Anchorage
Gymnastics neared a season-high score with a 195.725 despite a short week as it defeated Alaska-Anchorage Thursday night at McGuirk Arena.
The Chippewas last performed Saturday against Bowling Green when they broke the 196 mark while the Seawolves had 19 days between meets.
“It was a good win for us, were not used to middle of the week competition,” said head gymnastics coach Jerry Reighard. “The team did a really good job.”
For the second consecutive meet sophomore Taylor Noonan scored a near perfect 9.9 on the beam, putting her in Reighard's 'red zone'.
“I put a lot of pressure on her,” Reighard said. “I said, 'Do you want to be conference champions? Then put it all on the line right here,'.”
Noonan was not the only one who was an essential part of the CMU victory. Junior Brittany Petzold competed in every single event to help boost the team to its third win in a row.
“As Brittany goes, the team goes,” Reighard said. “She leads by example and knows how to rally the team.”
The Chippewas had at least two gymnasts place in the top three of each event. The overall team effort broke the benchmark of 49.000 in an event for the second meet in a row, even after a short week of practice.
After a busy two meet week, the team will prepare for yet another in meet on the weekend. It will board the plane tomorrow and set off to College Park, Md. to compete in a tri-meet with Maryland and Yale.
“We don’t practice for this meet after we board the plane tomorrow,” Reighard said. “We rest both days, but we are very comfortable going into the tri-meet.”
The team will compete at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 10 at the Comcast Center.
