“I think all you have to say is, ‘Michigan,’” she said.

As the Spartans prepare to travel to Ann Arbor to face their in-state rivals Friday at 6 p.m., they also have had to combat the exhaustion from traveling to Alaska for two meets over MSU’s spring break.

Klages said competing in two meets over such a short period of time, combined with the demanding requirements for travel to and from Alaska forced her to change up her team’s practice schedule in order to keep the gymnasts from allowing themselves to get sluggish.

But as she predicted, the Spartans are ready to tackle the matter at hand, and all it took was the mention of that one little word.

“It’s very motivating for the whole team because we haven’t been so closely ranked (to No. 21 Michigan) in a while,” senior Jackie Berg said. “So it seems much more doable to have a great meet against them, and with them being Michigan, it makes it that much sweeter if we were to pull that off.”

With an RQS of 194.840, the Spartans sit just behind the Wolverines, who have compiled an RQS of 195.475.

At the beginning of the season, the Spartans struggled to see results in their scoring and didn’t surpass the 195 mark in a competition until midway through February, which resulted in a lower RQS. But MSU has seen an upturn in its performance recently and begun to climb up in the rankings, a trend Berg said is an example of the Spartans peaking at just the right time.

“It’s the end of the season, and a lot of teams are getting tired, and we’re seeming to keep building off of each performance,” she said.

Although MSU now finds itself on the right side of the RQS rankings — in which a team must place in the top 36 to qualify for the NCAA Tournament — the gymnasts know they can’t allow themselves any room for error with the end of the regular season and the Big Ten Championships coming up.

“Even with the jump (in rankings), we’re still going to do what we need to do,” sophomore Dani Levy said. “We’re not going to let that affect us and not finish the season right. We’re going to do what we need to do and finish strong because we don’t want to go out on a bad note.”