Gymnastics team prepares for Alabama, quad-meet

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If there’s one thing MSU gymnastics head coach Kathie Klages can say about her team, it’s that she will put them up against any school in the nation.

So far this season, the Spartans have taken on then-No. 16 Washington and then-No. 25 Iowa, and despite dropping both meets, Klages isn’t shying away from the competition.

“The one thing that I’d like to profess about MSU gymnastics is that it’s sort of like MSU basketball,” she said. “I’m not afraid to compete against anybody.”

But if there’s one team the Spartans (0-2 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) should be nervous about competing against, it’s No. 5 Alabama. But Klages still is leading her team against the defending national champions when they travel to University Park, Pa., Saturday night, along with No. 9 Penn State and Cornell in the Spartans’ only quad-meet of the season.

Preparation for a quad-meet isn’t any different from any other week, but the Spartan gymnasts will have to adjust to an Olympics-style rotation rather than the dual rotation they are used to. Instead of the usual rotation for away meets — going from bars to vault, then floor to balance beam — the Spartans will go from bars to beam to floor to vault.

Though it may seem minute, mixing up the rotation of events could throw off the Spartan gymnasts tremendously. One of the things MSU has struggled with in the past two meets has been its balance beam rotation and its uneven parallel bars rotation. Klages theorized the falls may be stemming from a case of the jitters and has been working to help calm her gymnasts’ nerves the past couple weeks.

“We’ve been doing a lot of team assignments, which have been helping us,” sophomore Dani Levy said. “And they really help our confidence because then we know we can do it together and not just in the gym by ourselves.”

Although she had a career night against Iowa — posting scores of 9.825 on vault and 9.625 on balance beam — freshman Ashley Noll said there’s still a lot she has been working on to make sure she hits in competition the same way she does in practice.

“Keeping consistent and not letting myself get shaky or worked up over having to compete is important,” she said. “I just need to keep my nerves down and my confidence up.”

A strong showing against some top-ranked teams in Happy Valley would help MSU improve its national ranking, where it has been receiving votes in the polls but have yet to crack the top 25. But Klages is unconcerned about the daunting competition.

“Our focus is on ourselves, because we can’t control Alabama, we can’t control Penn State, we can only control ourselves,” she said. “So we need to be at our best so we can show the gymnastics world that Michigan State is not a 190 or 191 team, and we can stack up (against those schools).”

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