It was a close gymnastics meet at Jenison Field House on Saturday, where the Pittsburgh Panthers narrowly beat MSU, 193.025-192.425.
Both teams made good use of their warm-up time before the competition, and as Pittsburgh’s head coach Debbie Yohman said, “it could have gone either way.”
“It’s always going to be close when we come head to head with State,” Yohman said.
The teams battled for the win, and even with an enthusiastic set of fans in the stands, it was a hard fight for both sides.
The scores were close the entire competition, but the Spartans could not get ahead.
Alina Cartwright, who took all-around 1st place at last weekend’s meet against Illinois and is one of the Spartans’ key gymnasts, was out of the competition this Saturday.
Pittsburgh, like the Spartans, also had some athletes that were not competing.
MSU head coach Kathie Klages said that Cartwright is out because she slipped off the uneven bars and injured her neck.
She didn’t say how long Cartwright will be out.
“I believe the team is so much better than what you saw today,” she said.
MSU’s Mackenzie Smith fell off the bars onto the mat, hitting her face at the meet, inciting plenty of encouragement and support from her teammates.
“We had to fight for every tenth we got today,” Klages said. “When a teammate falls, it tends to bring the entire team’s attitude down.”
Klages said Smith struggles with committing to the routine in practice, often stopping in the middle and starting over.
Saturday was only their second home meet of the season, and Klages said they are working on improving from this loss by focusing on hitting routines, and not stepping out of bounds.
“For some reason, they lost the energy they had during warm-up,” Klages said.
“It’s a matter of finding even a one-tenth (point) correction for each athlete,” the coach said.
MSU’s Lisa Burt showed an excellent performance, receiving more than one award. She placed 1st on bars and tied for 1st on the balance beam with Pittsburgh’s Katie O’Rourke.
Burt also took all-around 1st place, scoring 38.7 points, followed by teammate Ashley Noll, who achieved a personal best of 35.650 points.
Burt said they did really well, but that “there are a couple things we need to fix.”
“It was a fight out there today, but we need to put this week behind us and learn from the past but always keep improving,” Burt said.
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Burt said she plans to celebrate her victory by watching Netflix.
The gymnastic team’s next meet will focus on autism awareness. They are competing against Penn State at 2:00 p.m. next Saturday at Jenison Field House.
“It’s gonna be really exciting, and we need to get the awareness out there,” Klages said.
