Ball State Gymnastics put together a solid afternoon to beat out Illinois-Chicago and Alaska - Anchorage in East Lansing. In a final second effort, Michigan State was able to top Ball State during the last rotation.
The Cardinals finished with a final team score of 194.850. Despite leading three of the four rotations, Ball State fell to Michigan State who scored a total of 194.975. Illinois-Chicago scored a team total of 194.325 and Alaska - Anchorage scored a team total of 192.250.
The strongest rotation for the Cardinals on Sunday proved to be on floor. On floor, senior Kaitlyn Menzione led once again with a score of 9.900. Some other top contributors to the team total of 49.025 were senior Sydney Finke with a score of 9.850 and sophomore Claudia Goyco with a score of 9.825.
This is the fourth meet in a row where Menzione notched at least a 9.900 on the floor.
“My routine today went really well,” Menzione said. “It's always great having my teammates cheering me on. I'm just honored to still be able to do this for a few more meets and I feel like we're all ready."
Menzione won the individual best score on the floor. This was the only event of the afternoon where a Ball State athlete seized an individual victory without a tie. Freshman Stefanie Schweikert tied for first on the vault with a score of 9.825.
“Stef stuck her vault well,” head coach Joanna Saleem said. “It was a wonderful performance. I'm really happy with our team. They stayed together and did a really solid job."
A common occurrence of the season for the Cardinals is to have a high vault score. Schweikert led the team with a 9.825 to bring the team total to 48.800 on the rotation.
Another trend that followed suit in Michigan was the beam being the lowest scoring rotation of the day. No athlete from Ball State scored higher than a 9.700 on the beam. This brought the total score to 48.425.
With four teams in one gym competing, there is a sense of big competition, a similar feel that will take place next weekend at the MAC Championships in DeKalb, Illinois.
“Today was a nice practice meet for us leading into MACs,” Saleem said. “It was loud and there were four teams and we stayed focused so we're excited about that."
Contact Drew Pierce with any comments at dlpierce2@bsu.edu or on Twitter @dpierce3cc
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