No. 17 Gymnastics hopes to avoid judging bias at Rutgers meet
Head coach Jerry Reighard is concerned about the low ranking of competition gymnastics will see in Saturday’s five-team meet.
Not because he thinks Central Michigan will lose to these teams, but that their low scores could drag CMU’s scores down with it, which is what hindered the team last weekend.
No. 17 Central Michigan had their third-lowest score of the year in Sunday’s victory against NIU, but Reighard says the team performed just as well as they have in the past few weeks.
“(The judges) had just judged two teams on Friday night, two teams on Saturday that were like 50th or 60th in the nation,” Reighard said. “They were giving 9.3’s and 9.4’s, so they get to us and think a 9.75 is big time.”
If the team could have equaled their season best at 196.6 Sunday, they would be tied for 12th in the country.
“It puts a little pit in our stomach and gets us more fired up,” said senior Emily Heinz. “(We’re) ready to come back and prove to not only those judges, but other judges that we are a Top 12 team, a 196 team, not a 194 team.”
Reighard said subjective judging is part of the sport that team’s have to deal with.
“What if you kicked a field goal and it barely made it through the uprights and the official said, ‘no, I’m only giving you two points for that,’” Reighard said. “It goes through, but they don’t like it so they devalue it. That’s the world we live in.”
Senior Brittany Petzold said the team is pushing harder this week to make their first routine count.
“We’ve just been working on making everything undeniable,” Petzold said. “If we don’t do that (in practice), then we’re starting over. We’re making the first routine count instead of just making the fourth and the fifth routine the best one that we can get.”
While the Chippewas are practically guaranteed victories against Towson, Yale and Southern Connecticut and is favored over host Rutgers, the biggest focus will be clearly separating themselves in order to earn a high score.
“I’m hoping that we show our gymnastics and we can separate ourselves from the rest of them,” Heinz said. “I think we can separate ourselves from Rutgers as well. I’ve watched some of their stuff and I think we’ll be able to do that.”
