Chippewas take on Eastern Michigan in first MAC home meet of the season
The season continues for Central Michigan Gymnastics at 7 p.m. tonight as it hosts Eastern Michigan at McGuirk Arena for CMU's first Mid-American Conference home meet of the season.
The Chippewas are the only MAC team without a loss with a record of 3-0 overall and 1-0 in MAC play.
“You can’t place too much importance on this meet," Head coach Jerry Reighard said. "It’s not that they (EMU) were last year’s champions. It really comes down to if you lose a meet, you can’t be MAC regular season champions and that’s our focus right now."
The Eagles enter their first conference meet 1-2 overall. EMU's best score is a 194.725 while CMU's best score this season is 194.950.
“It’s going to be very close through the completion. I think we have the mental attitude and we're at home and those are two big factors,” Reighard said.
The Chippewas improved on the bars in their last meet against Western Michigan, scoring a 49.050 after scoring a 47.625 in the first meet of the season against Wisconsin-Eau-Claire and Hamline. CMU scored 4 9.8s or higher on bars in the meet against WMU.
The Chippewas will look to get the momentum early against the Eagles.
“The momentum change will be on the first event — vault," Reighard said. "We have to come out really well on vaulting and we can control our own destiny right then and there rather than play catch up."
The Chippewas are coming off a meet on Sunday and had a short week to get ready for Friday's match against EMU.
“It’s really tough because were trying to put in a practice week in three days instead of five,” Reighard said. “We weren’t able to take an easy day Monday when we came back from Sunday. We had to go hard all week to be ready for Friday."
