Ball State gymnastics is on the road again to take on No. 16 George Washington and New Hampshire this weekend.
Last weekend against No. 10 Kentucky, the team saw a lot of success individually but just couldn’t put it together in the end.
“I think collectively as a whole we just have to do better,” head coach Joanna Saleem said. “We can’t go out and have a couple of great individual things, everybody needs to be ‘across the line’ and need to be able to have those routines that are at least the minimum of what we do in the gym. If you go out and do solid gymnastics, the score will show.”
Last meet, senior Shelby Arms led the team in the vault event with a score of 9.75, however, that score was only good for fourth in the overall stats.
“It’s important to focus on the details here in the gym,” Arms said. “Even though It was the highest score from the team, I still know where I could’ve been better. I just came into the gym and I make sure I can fix those little mistakes here at practice. The more I can do that consistently, the more I can do it on the competition floor and hopefully rank higher overall.”
As of the most recent rankings, New Hampshire sits 0.306 points ahead of the Cardinals. A win on Sunday would not only raise the team's average in the rankings, but would put the team in line for a double upset.
“Winning would be a great moral victory,” Saleem said. “I think it would be very doable to win and have a good meet. We have yet to hit all four events, so we're looking for that meet to happen hopefully this weekend.”
Coming out of the early season into the mid-season, the motto of “cross the line” has started to come into effect. According to Arms, this motto has taught her this season to push as far as you can each day.
“If you had a really good practice today, the next day, you don’t have to do anything different, but try to get an inch more over the line,” Arms said. “You really just need to get an inch better every day to cross that line.”
With season heading into a more conference heavy schedule, the team looks to establish a reputation to its fellow MAC competitors.
“If you can go out and be successful against some top ranked teams, then coming back into MAC competition will give you more of a moral and confidence boost,” Saleem said. “That will allow us to go out and do what we need to do to be successful in the MAC.”
The meet is scheduled to begin 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 5.
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