“It’s really important for us to keep our scores up,” senior Jackie Berg said. “We kind of started off (the season) a little bit slow, so getting these higher scores, 195s, 194s, will really help us when they’re figuring out our regional qualifying scores.”

To qualify for NCAA regionals, the Spartans’ regional qualifying score, or RQS, must place in the top 36 in the nation. The RQS is based on the teams’ top six scores, in which three must have come from an away meet. The high score is eliminated, and the remaining five scores are averaged to determine a team’s RQS.

Rankings sorted by RQS will be released Monday, but as of Feb. 20, MSU’s RQS is 192.955, which is hovering just around the 36th spot.

From the start of the meet, it appeared the Spartans would come out on top, taking advantage of Ball State’s missteps to jump to an early lead after the first rotation and never looking back. When it was all said and done, MSU’s score of 195.025 was the second highest it had been all season.

“That was really exciting to see,” head coach Kathie Klages said.

“We still had some mistakes, somebody left out a certain jump they were supposed to do, or somebody might not have stuck their dismount, or was a little crooked on something. But basically, it was an outstanding performance for us.”

Berg took top honors on the uneven parallel bars and balance beam in Friday’s meet, with scores of 9.850 and 9.800, respectively. In both events, MSU gymnasts took the top three spots, and on the bars, every Spartan who competed placed higher than the Cardinals.

Sophomore Taira Neal’s streak of six straight dual meets with a first place score on vault came to an end when her score of 9.825 landed her in second place behind Ball State’s Nicole Allen.

“It wasn’t really my best vault I would say, so I’m not too mad about it,” Neal said.

“It was still a pretty good score, so I wasn’t too disappointed.”

Klages added that Neal had been feeling under the weather, but was glad to see she was able to fight through and compete for a high score.

The Spartans will return to Jenison Field House for their final home meet of the year on Friday, when they host Illinois-Chicago at 7 p.m for senior night.