Well another season is now behind us. This season did not go exactly as planned, however, I have to say that I think it is one of the most rewarding seasons that I have been a part of here at Michigan. I am so incredibly proud of this team and what they were able to accomplish this year in spite of all of the adversity they faced! To win a Big Ten championship against a tough Penn State team and then qualify on all the way to nationals is something that they should be very proud of! We cannot judge our season by the last meet or the last routine performed but rather by the season as a whole! We had not just one or two individuals who stepped up but a whole team who stood together and fought all the way to the end! Every single member of this team deserves credit, and I hope that the experience that we had this year will benefit us over the next 3 or 4 years. These young athletes learned a great deal about inner strength, determination, and teamwork! They got a chance to watch the top 6 teams compete for a national title and they know what it takes. I hope it will motivate them to work hard over the summer to improve skills and raise the bar for our program. I absolutely LOVE this team and am so happy that we will not be losing very many of them to graduation. I wish both Clare and Carol a tremendous amount of success and happiness. I know they will do very well for themselves and they know they will always be a part of our Michigan family!!! As for all our returning young women and our incoming freshmen, next year is going to be awesome!!!
I would like to thank all of our faithful gymnastics fans for supporting us! Those of you who came all the way to Utah - you are incredible!! To the 4 men's gymnasts that drove to Utah - you're NUTS!! But we love you!!! I think this is the last briefing of the year but if any of you have questions or updates about anything please email me. I will be doing a lot of travel in the next few months but I will get back to you!!!
GO BLUE!!!
Bev
Hello, hello to all my favorite Michigan gymnastics fans! I'm sorry that I am so behind on my briefing from Big Ten's. Many thanks to all of the people who sent me congratulations emails. They were very sweet and much appreciated! I relayed them all to the team since they are the ones who deserve the credit for all the hard work put into this season. What can I say except WOW!! I feel like a recording, because I keep telling you how proud I am of these young women, but darn if they don't just keep impressing me even more!
This Big Ten Championship was so amazing in so many ways. First of all, the fact that we are still fielding a team is an accomplishment. Second, we hit 24 for 24 routines and beat a very good Penn State team who also had a great meet! It is so much more satisfying to win when both teams are at their best! MSU would have been right in there also, but they really struggled on beam just like we did last year! I felt their pain!!! Univ. of Illinois looked the best I have ever seen them. They really did a nice job. But to gut through a season the way our team has this year and to be peaking and hitting when it counts is a wonderful feeling. I have believed in this group of young women from the very beginning. I knew they had the character, determination and committment to hang in there and do whatever it took to get the job done. To watch them after the announcer recognized them as the winning team was something really special for me. Some were smiling from ear to ear and hugging and some were crying and hugging. Some were jumping up and down and some just plain looked so relieved. I felt every one of those emotions all in one! I don't think anyone slept Sat. night. I heard stories of them sitting at a laptop computer spending hours just clicking through all the photos up on MGoBlue.com. Taking the 12:01 picture with the trophy and the 12:06 picture etc... Good stuff! Memories they will cherish for a lifetime! Me, I went to bed and laid there reflecting on the year and just feeling so happy for these ladies! Not able to sleep and thinking about how early we had to get up to fly home on Sun. :-( Louis and I never got to come all the way home. We got to Detroit and then when the team got on the bus to head for home, we split up and flew out again to go recruiting. We arrived back home on Tues. just in time for practice again! Whew I didn't even know what day it was most of last week.
Anyway, now we are approaching Regionals. Another big challenge for us this Sat. at 6pm at Crisler Arena. We host the #1 team in the country, the Univ. of Florida (yes, in gymnastics too!), ourselves at #12, and Arkansas at #13. Our in region teams are the Univ. of Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, and Rutgers. The top two teams from this meet will move on to the NCAA Championships in Salt Lake City, UT on April 26-28th. We certainly hope to be one of those two teams!! Arkansas will be a tough contest, and it will be a great meet. It should be a close meet. So make sure that you are there early, because you will want a good seat for the action!
Bev
Well here we are, the championship season is upon us. Everything we have
done up to this point was all just practice for what we have coming these
next several weeks. First and always most importantly is the meet we have
this weekend! Big Ten's!!! This year Big Ten's promises to be a very competitive
meet for sure!! Penn State is hosting and will go into the meet with a
.025 lead over Michigan for top ranking. This is the first year in a very
long time that Michigan is not going into the meet as the top seed. Both
Penn State and Michigan State have beaten us in head to head competition
this season so they have reason to go into this championship feeling like
it is anyone's meet to win! I believe our Michigan team is up to the challenge!!
These ladies have fought and fought all season long, so they are prepared
to give it their best!!! They have been competing under pressure all season.
Pressure from the loss of some of our top athletes and knowing that everyone
left HAD to step up and fill the gaps. Pressure from competing at some
of the top schools in the country and in front of crowds of 8,000-10,000
people. Freshmen and sophmores who had to compete like seniors and carry
the load. Trust me - finally getting to compete for the championship ring
will be fun compared to what we have been through already! They are fired
up, and we are all looking forward to this weekend! Penn State hosts a
great meet, and I know it will be a good experience for us. We just need
to keep believing in ourselves and what we can accomplish! I'd vote for
these guys to win NCAA Team of the Year!!! I'd settle for a 2007 Big Ten
ring!!! Go Blue!!!
Bev
Another week closer to Big Ten's and the postseason! Whew! I feel like
I keep saying the same thing week after week, but I just can't tell you
how proud I am of this team! To give you an idea what we are up against,
here is the position we were in on Friday night:
Without Lindsey Bruck - 39 plus AA - Co-Captain
Without Nellie Kippley - 39 plus AA - Co Captain
Without Tatjana Thuener-Rego on both Vault and Floor - 9.9 performer on
both
Without Sarah Curtis - Top freshman AA we were counting on for big things
Without Jordan Sexton - a top three-event freshman for us (Bars, Beam,
and Floor)
17 of our top 24 routines, missing from the line up!
Carol McNamara is competing through a lot of pain after her foot fracture
in late Sept. She is doing a solid job, but not able to be 100%. Katie
Lieberman is still having problems with chronic knee pain that has forced
her to water down her tumbling. Kelsey Knutson is back on beam and bars
after a back injury that held her out of the first four meets. Maureen
Moody is still working her way back on beam and floor after sitting our
a whole season last year with fractures in her back!
I tell you all of this NOT to make excuses, but rather to show you how
absolutely miraculous it is that we have still been able to put up scores
in the 196's despite of all it!!
The good news!!! Clare Flannery, a senior who did not compete much in
any of her first three years, has been a savior for us on beam this year
and has gone in on vault several times when we needed her there. She has
shown that continued hard work and perseverance pays off! She will get
to graduate from this program and know that she made huge contributions
when we needed her to!! A TRUE TEAM PLAYER! Carol McNamara, giving 110%
of herself for the team to compete through pain when she could justifiably
call it a career and sit it out in the training room! Same to be said
for Katie Lieberman!! Megan Moore - same story as Clare Flannery. Hasn't
competed much but is ready to go at all times if called upon, and pushing
herself to improve her skills every single day! Becky Bernard, Huneth
Lor and Tatjana Thuener-Rego coming back this year and being the sophomore
sensations that have kept us alive this season!!! Kelsey Knutson and Maureen
Moody coming in as freshmen and having to handle the pressure of competing
like veterans and doing it so well! Jaclyn Kramer, a freshman walk-on
who did not think that she was good enough to compete for Michigan when
she came in Sept. and now has been counted on many times this season to
step in on beam and floor and Friday night went 9.9 on beam and 9.875
on floor for us! She has come so far in such a short period of time it
is amazing! Last but not least are our crop of injured! Lindsey, Sarah,
Jordan, and recently Nellie: these ladies are providing a tremendous amount
of motivation and support for this team from the bench. They are not sitting
in the training room feeling sorry for themselves. They are out there
day in and day out rehabing and supporting their teammates to keep pushing.
They are somehow willing their energy to the rest of the team to get through
hard times! I admire each and every one of these ladies tremendously!
These are the things I have been so focused on this year!! No, this season
has not been what we hoped it would be. Sometimes it just works that way.
But I have learned a great deal about the young women that make up this
TEAM!! They will go on and they will be great because nothing will stand
in their way. They have dealt with set backs along the road but have learned
something valuable from each and every one of them. The spirit in this
team will be what carries us through! We hope to have both Nellie and
Tatjana back in the All Around by Big Tens. But we will continue to take
the rest of the season one day at a time, and deal with whatever hand
we are dealt. We will control the things we can control and that's what
we can do! So stay tuned because as Louis (my assistant coach) says "Its
just getting good"
Bev
Happy Monday!! First off, I'm sorry I didn't get a briefing out last week. My days flew by before I had a chance to blink! Lots to talk about today. Going back to our March 3rd meet, Georgia, and looking forward to our Coaches Care Challenge meet coming up on Friday night.
After our disappointing showing at Utah, we came back in the gym and focused on making gymnastics fun! I felt that our athletes were placing way to much pressure on themselves to perform, and they were losing sight of the fact that you have to enjoy competing. We have such a great group of young women, and they really want to reach our goals even though we have sustained so many injuries. We have people who are really stepping up and performing at a level that they never knew they could perform at. They keep expecting more of themselves which is great, but they have to realize how far they have already come and be happy about their progress. We tried some creative and interesting new things in workouts over spring break, and we were able to get the team to lighten up a little and enjoy practices. We carried that into our meet at MSU and it really paid off for us! We were without 16 of our top 24 routines because of injuries and we still scored a season high 196.475. I was so proud of them and it was FUN!!
We then came back for a short week of practice before taking off to Georgia. We again had a great meet and hit another season high 196.50. We had Nellie back in on 2 events, but we still need her back on beam and bars. She sustained a concusion when she took a fall on her beam dismount at Utah, and we have been very careful not to have her do anything that she doesn't feel totally comfortable doing. We hope that within the next 2 weeks she should be fine. Goodness, we had several highlights from both of those meets! Katie Lieberman made her uneven bars debut for the season and scored a 9.825 I think in both meets. Huneth Lor just keeps edging up her all-around score to have personal bests!! Becky Bernard has turned it on here in these last two meets on bars and beam, and she has made some significant improvement on a new vault that we are hoping she will be able to debut before the end of the season if all goes well. Clare Flannery and Jaclyn Kramer have both really handled the pressure of being called upon in some line ups beautifully! They have shown a great deal of confidence and consistency. So we are slowly climbing in the rankings (to be tied for #10) and we are starting to be able to throw out some of the early season low scores. We just need to continue to remain consistent and we will be right where we need to be going into regionals.
This week we are very excited to be having our Coaches Care Challenge meet which is our annual fundraiser meet. We are donating all proceeds from this event to the C. S. Mott Children's Hospital. We have been selling T-shirts for $10 and we are also bringing on sponsors for the event. We are looking to have our best year yet for this very worthy cause!! So PLEASE COME OUT AND JOIN US!! Friday night 7:30pm at Crisler Arena! Buy and wear your 2007 Coaches Care Challenge T-shirt and maybe bring an extra dollar or two to donate. We have partnered with Univ. of Michigan Dance Marathon this year and they are helping us to promote this event. They donated over $300,000 last year to Mott Children's Hospital! We have several sponsors this year who will all be identified at the meet. So don't miss it. We host the Univ. of Missouri who is currently ranked 18th. So it promises to be a good meet with a lot of great gymnastics and all for a great cause!! I hope to see you there!!!!
Go Blue!!
Bev