It will be double the excitement this weekend for MSU gymnastics, as both the men’s and women’s teams will compete in the Big Ten Championships.
The women will make the short drive to Ann Arbor for their event, while the men will have a longer haul to State College, Pa., for their meet.
The women are coming off a victory last Saturday against Missouri and are hoping to improve on last year’s fifth-place finish this weekend.
“I’m expecting a superb performance out of my team,” women’s head coach Kathie Klages said. “I think that they’ve built the confidence throughout the season to know they can go out and compete.”
Klages said the team may have a hard time challenging favorite Michigan for the top spot, but she believes the Spartans can run with the other teams at the meet.
“I think that we can only do what we’re capable of doing, with the Big Ten gaining strength in terms of the teams and their level of gymnastics,” she said. “We can just go out and do our jobs and see where the chips will fall.”
Senior captain Lori Ruane said the team needs to focus on its own performance and not worry about what the judges or the other teams are doing during the seven-team meet.
“We have a lot more teams who are going to be there,” she said. “It’s going to be a longer meet, so we have to concentrate on being focused and remembering why we’re there.”
For the third-ranked men’s squad, it will return to Penn State for a second straight weekend after suffering a loss at the hands of the Nittany Lions last weekend.
Head coach Rick Atkinson said the meet is one where any of the seven teams competing can win. All seven Big Ten teams are ranked in the top 10 nationally.
“It’s going to be a wild time, that’s for sure,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve been coaching, which has been 15 years, that anybody could win, and anybody could get seventh.”
Junior Jonathan Plante said the team’s attitude is very upbeat heading into the meet.
“I think a couple of the other Big Ten schools are beat up (while) we’re pretty much injury-free,” he said. “We’ve been pretty consistent, so it’s a matter of going in and if we hit our sets, we’ll end up where we end up.”
The men’s team will compete in its final Big Ten meet this weekend.
Atkinson said although the men’s gymnastics program will be cut after this season, sentiments won’t be a part of the team’s mindset in State College.
“We still have regionals and nationals coming up,” he said. “So if we start worrying about which one is our last one here, or last one there, or last dual, or last anything, that’s going to take the focus off of our task at hand.”
