“Every day we’ve been using social media to put different elements of the day out there,” Michigan State Head Coach Mike Rowe said. “This is the first year we’ve ever done this for national girls and women in sports day. The intent this year was to bring more awareness to it and every year we’ll try to build on it a little bit more.”

The meet started up quickly as the Spartans began on vault where senior Ashley Hofelich earned her career high score of a 9.925, contributing to the team’s season best overall vault score of 49.275

“It was an electric feeling to get that career high,” Hofelich said. “From all the repetition and work we put in the gym to get those landings right and I felt it and stuck the landing. It’s all about trusting your training and it's a nice feeling when that hard work pays off.”

MSU moved onto the uneven parallel bars for their second event of the night. It started off rough for the Spartans when sophomore Baleigh Garcia took a fall, but she came back with her head held high. Following Garcia, senior Lea Mitchell and junior Jori Jackard tied their career high scores of 9.9 and 9.925.

“I’m super excited about my score. It's such an honor to be able to come back for a fifth year especially after the past two seasons. It’s great to get out and compete with this amazing team,” Mitchell said.

The girls then moved onto the balance beam where they made major strides. Freshman Gabrielle Stephen stunned the audience with a career high of 9.95.

“I’m ecstatic with tonight’s results,” Rowe said. “The fact that we got the Big Ten win was nice. Maryland is excellent competition and for us to do what we did and increase the program score for the season was super.”

Michigan State wrapped up the night on the floor where they earned their lowest score of the night of 49.050. The team had a few falls during this event resulting in lower scores than usual.

“We had some great highs in places that we haven’t seen initially all the time and some uncharacteristic falls in some places, but it seemed in every case the rest of the lineup had each other’s back and we just kept going,” Rowe said. “That’s what they’re trained to do and when it works like that it’s excellent.”

MSU ended the meet with their season best overall score of 196.875 and their first Big Ten conference win.

The Spartans will spend the week practicing and gearing up for next weekend's competition.

“Next week is a two-meet weekend for us. We’re up at Central Michigan on Friday and back here with Illinois on Sunday, so we’ve got to think about resting some of our all-arounders for possibly Friday so we can go for that Big Ten counter on Sunday,” Rowe said. “We’re going to have to be careful how we train this week.”