n the last meet of the regular season, the gymnastics team fell short of its goals in the inaugural Big Five Meet with Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska and Ohio State.
The team earned a score 195.250, good enough for a third place tie with the Buckeyes. A tiebreaker sent Ohio State to the second session of the Big Ten championships and left MSU disappointed with a berth in the first session in the Big Ten championships.
Illinois came in first with a score of 196.050, Nebraska followed with 196.000 and Maryland came in last with 194.875.
The first session will start at 11:30 a.m. and features MSU, Iowa, Maryland and Rutgers. The second session begins at 4:30 p.m. and will feature Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio State and Penn State.
“I have already stressed to my team that even though we’re in the first session, it doesn’t mean we can’t beat some of the teams in the night session,” Head coach Kathie Klages said. “And that’s what our goal is going to be (trying) to finish out this season as high up in the Big Ten as we can at the Big Ten championship meet.”
Barring a terrible performance, the team — currently at No. 27 in the regional qualifying score standings, according to Klages — is in a good position to secure a place in the NCAA regionals as the top 36 to automatically qualify.
“Our goal is to just get the best score that we can to really help our RQS to enhance our chances for a better seed in the NCAA regional meet,” Klages said. “Right now we’re ranked 27th after the meets that occurred yesterday and the day before.”
Klages said that staying in the top 36 remains the focus of her team and coaching staff. She said the remainder of the season will be spent on earning the best possible seed.
“We’ll just go and compete wherever they send us,” she said. “We want to be there and do the best that we can for our program.”
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