Hello, hello, hello. I'm sorry I have not been very diligent with my briefings lately. Getting ready for Senior night, then Big Ten's, and now trip planning for Regionals has been a little hectic. Wow, here we are about to embark on another post season of competition. The seasons just go by faster and faster every year! Allow me to go backwards and bring you up to speed.
Our senior night was March 22nd at Crisler. It is always an emotional evening when we have to bid farewell to our seniors in their last home competition of the year. We competed against Utah who had a great meet. We came up a little short but did not have our best performance by far. It has been a long season and I think it just took its toll on us that night. It was probably just what we needed though to make us realize that we needed to stay sharp and be focused and ready to compete every time out. Our senior night festivities were very nice! Each senior has a highlight video and I tape a message ahead of time that gets played throughout the arena. It is so bittersweet to be celebrating their success but having to say goodbye at the same time. They will all be missed very much!!
The very next weekend we hosted Big Ten's and it was an awesome event! We had a great crowd and many of our alumni were here in attendance. We won our 16th Big Ten Championship in program history and our 15th in the last 17 years. It was very exciting. Kylee was a floor exercise champion and Sarah was the Uneven Bars Champion. Lindsey was runner up on balance beam and Kylee and Katie were runners up on vault. So we had a great showing. We recognized some of our past champions by having them hand out awards after the meet. It was awesome! To see how many were there and how they have all grown up and have families and successful career's etc... Illinois really had a great meet and pulled out the second place finish by .025 I think? So it was a great competition. It was fun for Kylee to have her sister Marika's team do so well and be so excited! PSU finished 3rd. Lindsey Bruck won the gymnast of the year and was VERY deserving of the award. We had 4 1st team All Big Ten and 4 2nd team All Big Ten honorees which was a new Big Ten record of 8 from any one team.
Now on to Regionals! Well we got sent all the way across the country to Oregon State Univ. It will be a long trip but we are excited that we will get to see Joanne Bowers and Shanna Duggan! Joanne was my assistant coach for 5 years before getting the head job at Washington and when she went she took along with her Shanna Duggan who had been a Michigan gymnast and then student assistant for one year. It will be so fun to see them! So we will be heading out tomorrow and preparing to compete on Sat. evening for a chance to return the NCAA Championship for our 16th straight year. The championships this year will be held in Athens, GA on April 24th, 25th, & 26th. Keep an eye on your computer as we compete Sat. night and cross your fingers that everything goes as planned! I think the team is ready and anxious so I'm looking forward to it!!
That's all for now! Tune in for an update in the next 2 weeks!
Go Blue,
Bev
Hello and a huge thank you to all of you who have been so kind with your calls and emails of congratulations about our win over Georgia this past weekend!! Wow!! The whole meet atmosphere was a lot of fun!!! We had a great crowd, and you all gave our team so much energy it was awesome!! I am so proud of our team! They came into that meet with confidence and they were relaxed and we had a lot of fun!! This is a special group of young women. They are on a mission and they believe in themselves and in each other. This win was really important to us because it just proved what we already knew and believed, which is that we can contend for the title!!
We started out strong on vaulting with our freshman Kari Pearce. Kari has been a rock for us all season. She doesn't get the spotlight or the newspaper articles but she has been a very important part of our success this season. She has gotten us started off on both Vault and Floor all season long with very strong performances and scores!! We continued right through the line up with strong vaults. Close to being sticks but not totally sticks so we still have some room to get better there. We were able to get out of the gate with a small lead after the first event which helped to fuel the fire.
Bars went very well and we showed why we have been ranked in the top 3 all season on this event! Trish Wilson won the event with a 9.925. The lead grew by a little bit more with our Bars performance. Beam ended up being a great event. Huneth Lor, as she has been week after week, started us off with a solid routine. We had a fall in our second routine which put some pressure on the remainder of the line up. Enter Sarah Curtis! Sarah really just stepped up with the confidence of a champion and rocked a routine with a stuck double back dismount as the exclamation point! 9.9 went up as the score and we were back on track! The next 3 routines were so solid they looked like they were being preformed on the floor! It was great! We were able to move into the final rotation with a .625 lead and so we knew that we just had to hit floor.
I thought that we really "performed" our floor routines. I always think that they do a good job in performing them but this week they just had that little extra sparkle I thought. With our final floor performance we knew we had secured the victory and our best team score of the season. It was a great feeling! It's funny how some meets feel stressful and some meets you feel nervous, but this meet I think we all just felt like we had everything to gain and nothing to lose so we were relaxed and just had fun! We hope to be able to continue on this path of confidence as we take the road for our final away meet of the season this weekend at Univ. of Maryland. After that we return home for our final home meet of the season and senior night. Then it's into post season, which is what this is all about! Everything we have done up to now is just practice for Big Ten's, Regionals and Nationals! We feel ready!
Thanks and Go Blue!
Bev
Here we are at week #9 of the season and we are gearing up for the home stretch. A home stretch in which 2 out of 3 remaining regular season meets consist of #1 Georgia and #2 Utah!! Both of these meets will be here at Crisler Arena. This Fri. March 7th we host the Univ. of Georgia. 3 time NCAA champions and currently ranked #1 in the country. Our team is extremely excited for this weekend! We believe in ourselves!!! That in and of itself will make us competitive!! It is great to go into a home meet being the underdog and have nothing to lose and everything to gain! We do not have the pressure unless we place it on ourselves. We need to go into this meet and be aggressive and have fun!! That is what competition is about, having fun!!! I believe that our athletes are in the right frame of mind going into this weekend and I am very excited to see how it all unfolds. It is guaranteed to be a great meet for any sports fan, so I encourage everyone who loves sport to come out Fri. night at 7:30 to Crisler Arena!!
We are coming off of a two week road trip and are glad to be back at home this weekend. We had 2 very good meets on the road. We scored a season high in North Carolina 197.125 but returned home from Missouri disappointed by our team score of 196.20. The team preformed well which is the only thing that we can control. We counted no falls or major mistakes of any kind. The judging was tight, that's part of our sport and the subjectivity of our judging. It is frustrating that's all I can really say. We move on and we get ready for the next meet which is what we are going to do!!
Looking ahead, after Fri. night against Georgia, we will travel to Univ. of Maryland for our final away meet opportunity of the season. Then we return home Sat. March 22nd to face #2 Utah in Crisler Arena for a 6pm start! That will also be our senior night and we will be recognizing our 4 seniors in their last home performance. We will then host the Big Ten Championship on March 29th at 2:00pm. before finding out where we will be sent for the NCAA regional championships. So stay tuned as things are just getting warmed up for a very exciting home stretch for the 2008 season!!!
Go Blue,
Bev Plocki