No. 19 gymnastics sweeps MAC weekly awards heading into pair of weekend road meets
No. 19 gymnastics is finally taking their show on the road after going undefeated the past five weeks at home.
Central Michigan will travel to Eastern Michigan Friday and Bowling Green Sunday to face two teams it hasn’t lost to since 2008. Head coach Jerry Reighard just wants his team to focus on hitting their number.
“We’re the only ones that can help ourselves,” Reighard said. “No one else can help us. It doesn’t matter who wins or loses to anyone else, it matters what our number is at the end of the weekend. If we can do two scores this weekend that helps us, that really empowers us.”
The Chippewas scored a 196.6 last weekend in the Michigan-Illinois Challenge, good enough for fourth-best in program history. The Eagles also had their highest score of the season last weekend in the challenge with a 194.8, their highest score in a decade. BGSU's best this year is a 194.6.
Reighard said he doesn’t see either team hitting much higher than a 194 this weekend.
“I’m anticipating that Eastern Michigan will be the toughest of the two opponents,” Reighard said. “We saw them go from what I thought in warm-ups this last week as a non-entity, to an inspired team that felt they could really contend with us.”
Junior Taylor Noonan, who was awarded MAC Specialist of the Week, said the team’s added depth could play a factor in its two meets this weekend.
“I think we’re deep this year,” Noonan said. “So that’s going to help us this weekend on two in a row meets because we haven’t always had the extra person. We haven’t always had two exhibitions per event, which we do now.”
Noonan said last season’s eight away meets have helped the team become comfortable on the road.
“I think we thrive on the road,” Noonan said. “I think we’re going to do fine. We’ve got to keep the energy up and we’ve got to believe in ourselves.”
Reighard said the biggest challenge will be competing in a different order. In gymnastics, the home team competes on vault first, followed by uneven bars, balance beam and floor. The away team typically starts on uneven bars, then vault, floor and balance beam.
“Instead of being on vaulting, which is a ballistic, use-all-the-adrenaline-you’ve-got event, now you have to be in a controlled mode,” Reighard said. “That’s going to be a challenge for us. I’m not really worried about the hotel and all that kind of stuff. I think it’s just a mindset of turning it on on bars rather than on vaulting.”
CMU will look to senior Brittany Petzold on bars to get the team off to a strong start. Petzold was named MAC Gymnast of the Week this week after scoring a 9.85 on vault, a 9.875 on bars and a 9.775 on floor.
Five different Chippewas have received Gymnast of the Week or Specialist of the Week awards this season.
