Video Blog: head coach Brice Biggin on the team's work during the holiday break

The student-athletes on the Kent State Gymnastics team are home for the holidays, but that doesn't mean their hard work stops. Head coach Brice Biggin discusses how the team stays in shape during the holidays and the hard work that goes into getting ready for competition once everyone returns to campus.

Video Blog: Brice Biggin on an encouraging Blue/Gold at Pittsburgh

Head coach Brice Biggin on an encouraging Blue/Gold Meet at Pittsburgh on Saturday from a young but confident Golden Flashes squad.

Video Blog: Brice Biggin on the upcoming season and preparations for Pittsburgh on Saturday

The Golden Flashes head coach discusses a new look team heading into the 2014-15 season and the preparations for Saturday's 2 p.m. Blue & Gold Exhibition Meet at Pittsburgh.

NCAA Baton Rouge Regional - April 5th & 6th

Our final two days in Baton Rouge, La. with the competition day and our journey back home.

Leading up to the Competition:

Our day started off with a team breakfast at the hotel before packing up and heading to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. We pulled out of the hotel parking lot around noon and headed for the PMAC - due to the traffic threat with LSU's multiple sporting events (a track meet, baseball game, softball game, football spring and the gymnastics regionals) going on, so we prepared for a high traffic count.

   

Saturday's open stretch/warm up started at one for all six teams as the March-In was slated for four. After a good warm up we headed for the locker room to prepare to come in and give it our all. 

Take a look at our performance:

Our rotation order was started off on the uneven bars then we headed to the balance beam before a bye round. Our last two events were in the third and fourth rotations as we headed to the floor and finished on the vault before a bye ended our day. 

The lineup for the uneven bars started off with Kelsey Lawless as she scored a 9.000. She was followed by Whitnee Johnson (9.750), Chelsea Drooger (9.350), Jaymi Baxter (9.700), Rebecca Osmer (9.800) and Marie Case (9.775). We had a team total after our first event of 48.375. 

Our lineup for the balance beam had Nicole Radon leading off, with Chelsea Drooger up next followed by Kayla Kosmerl, Jordan Hardison, Nicolle Eastman and Marie Case. Radon scored a 9.750 on the opening act before Drooger followed up with a 9.600, Kosmerl a 9.725, Hardison with a 9.125, Eastman a 9.800 with Case closing the beam with a 9.850. We scored a 48.725 on the balance beam bringing our team total after two to a 97.100. 

After a third rotation bye we were heading to the floor exercise where Nicole Radon started things off again followed by Nicolle Eastman, Samantha Gordon, Jordan Hardison, Amiah Mims anchored by Marie Case. Radon started off with a 9.800 while the scores only increased from there. Eastman followed up with a 9.825, Gordon a 9.850, Hardison a 9.825, Mims 9.875 and Case bringing it home with a 9.900 bringing the team total to a 49.275. 

Heading into the fourth and final event we had a team total of 146.375. Jaymi Baxter led off on the vault with a 9.750. Jordan Hardison went next and turned in a 9.775 as was then followed by Kelsey Lawless, 9.650, Amiah Mims, 9.650, Chelsea Drooger, 9.775, and Marie Case, 9.800. The team scored a 48.750 bringing our regional score to a final 195.125. 

We finished fourth in the regional, not advancing to the national championships in Birmingham, Ala. on April 18-20. The top two teams at each regional advanced while Marie Case advanced as a individual competitor in the All-Around. Case finished tied for fifth in the All-Around with a 39.325.

Just after the meet finished we learned that Case was the National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches/Women Central Region Co-Gymnast of the Year as she tied for the award with Rheagan Courville out of LSU. She became the second Kent State Gymnast to win the award as she joined Shelly Stambaugh (1993-95). 

Dinner plans:

After the meet we headed to dinner at a local place called Walk-Ons. We had a side room that quickly filled with our team and the high numbers of family members that made the trip to show us support at the regionals. After eating we departed back for the hotel around nine. 

Our day was complete with only having another travel day ahead of us. Some of the group left in the early morning around three, another third left around six and the last group at eight. The first and third group had some shaky travel issues with the airport, the second group made it with ease back to Kent. 

Our Flights the next morning:

The first group were running late landing in Atlanta and missing their connecting flight, but eventually made it to Akron-Canton Airport with the help of the airlines finding the next flight for them to jump on. 

The final group were nervous that they weren't going to have a seat on their first flight, possibly causing them to miss their connection in Atlanta, due to the flight being over booked.  With trying to find out their fate with the seats, the plane was running behind coming from Alexandria, La. delaying the flight out of Baton Rouge by an hour.

The girls were entertaining themselves with a handstand competition in the airport. They made the first flight which was a relief and made the connection flight back to Akron-Canton to end their trip to and from the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional. 

We accomplished a few things on our trip - have fun, enjoy our time with performing the best we can and send someone to the National Championships.

Our next journey is to the NCAA National Championships on Fri., April 18- Sun., April 20 in Birmingham, Ala. with senior Marie Case to compete in the All-Around, who will be rotating with UCLA at the championships. 

For  more information and to follow Marie Case at the National Championships, go to www.kentstatesports.com or follow us on twitter @KentStGym

Go Flashes!

By Brad Bee
Assistant Director of Athletic Communication

NCAA Baton Rouge Regional - April 3rd & 4th

Our journey to the NCAA Central Regional in Baton Rouge Louisiana on April 5th with our experience leading up to it. Input from Head Coach Brice Biggin, Assistant Coach Craig Ballard and Senior Women's Administrator Janet Kittell. 

Coach Biggin: 

"The two weeks leading up to tomorrow have been really good and we feel really good about it. The practices and attitudes from the girls towards the regional show they were determined over the two weeks and I think we got a lot accomplished in those weeks.

The consistency of the team over the season shows we are ready and I think if we go out there and try to compete harder, it wouldn’t benefit the team from what we have worked on leading up to the meet. We just need to go out there and do what we do in practice every day.

The nice thing about this team, they have mixed together really well and worked together, and that has pulled them through some really tough meets this season. As a staff we think they will go out there and have a great meet tomorrow."

Coach Ballard:

"We have had some exciting travel plans since leaving Kent on Thursday morning …  with three flights out of two different airports and through six cities to get the team to Baton Rouge, it was successful and everyone got here with no issues and that is great.

On Thursday afternoon we traveled down to New Orleans to site see and got to Tour the French Quarter …  Led by Janet Kittell, Senior Women’s Administrator, who showed us where to go and what we should experience.

Then we walked over to Bourbon Street in downtown New Orleans, where we got to experience a variety of different cultures and to see the life of Bourbon Street during the day and saw the corner where they have a live camera set up - EarthCam.

The girls were entertained with the different musicians and magicians on the streets while going in and out of all the shops including a majority of the VooDoo shops. Some stopped and posed for pictures with different places and random people on the street. 

Fridays practice day was great. LSU is a good host and their Pete Maravich Assembly Center (PMAC) is a great facility. The girls were relaxed and had a great practice leading into our objective tomorrow.

They got use to the environment with the layout of the arena, where everything was and it got them focused for tomorrow. Keeping that consistency that we've had throughout the season with being ready to go and well prepared heading into the practice day and carry that over to the meet. 

After practice, we went over to go see Mike the Tiger – LSU’s live mascot that has his own habitat on campus.

You can watch Mike live with their TigerCam.

We then headed to dinner at Boutins which was highly recommended to us from locals and planned out by Assistant Coach Sharon Sabin.

We had a great experience with some local Cajun Louisiana fare. A great atmosphere, food was amazing with a Local band followed by a great team meeting before bed.

Barb Knapic, KSU gymnastics alumna and NADC Board member, met up with us at Practice day at the PMAC and enjoyed the rest of the day with us.

At the team meeting, we got a chance to regain our purpose and focus on tomorrow. We got to figure out Logistics for Saturday so we can be prepared and united heading into the meet."

Senior Women's Administrator, Janet Kittell: 

"The trip has been a very nice blend of fun and education and culture and serious competition -- from Beignets at Café Du Monde to Alligator and Crawfish at Boutin’s on Thursday night. 

The team has had great exposure to a culture and an experience that will last a lifetime.

They have had fun these past two days and are ready to compete.

We look forward to the Regional with LSU, Stanford, Auburn, Arizona and Iowa State."

Check back for more information on how our Trip to Baton Rouge, La. has been and the results of the NCAA Regional.

Results from the NCAA Regional - Click Here 

For more information on the gymanstics team, go to www.kentstatesports.com

Go Flashes!

By Brice Biggin 

Head Coach

Even though we were disappointed with second, I felt like the team did about the best it could. We had one fall on beam and one fall on floor. But for the most part we looked confident and I thought we competed well.

It was a meet where some of the scoring was frustrating at times across the board. When you look at scores across the country, the big complaint from most coaches is consistency. I think a lot of coaches were disappointed in the fact that this meet is really important and it doesn’t start to get real tight. There were some teams that were severely affected by some of the scoring. Luckily we were in a position where it didn’t affect us, but there were some teams that took nothing out of the meet and were displaced from regionals because of the tight scoring.

That’s the way it is sometimes, but it was pretty frustrating.

Overall, I have no complaints about our team. Our season went as well as could be expected. We had a lot of kids step up and get valuable experience when others were injured and hurt. This team competed as a true team all year long.

With this past weekend at the MAC Championships, I don’t think we can say that Marie Case surprised us, but winning the all-around by over half of a point is completely unheard of. She was at 39.5 and the next closest was at 38-something. It was a phenomenal farewell to Mid-American Conference competition for her. Gymnast of the Year and Senior of the Year were well-deserved honors for her. She was just fantastic.

The Pete Maravich Assembly Center
at Louisiana State University

I thought Jordan Hardison as a freshman competed well for us on three events and got some great experience. Rebecca Osmer, for her first year coming in for us as a transfer, tied for second on bars with a fantastic routine. Jaymi Baxter had a great championship meet in her first experience after last year sitting out with an injury from the previous season.

We had people step up all year and they all showed up at the championship and performed.

Next up for us is the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional hosted by LSU on April 5 at the Maravich Center.

We are excited to go to Baton Route, with the great location and gymnastics fans down there. We’ve been there before and we were treated well, so we are ready to go.

It is going to be a great competition with the teams that are out there – LSU, Auburn, Stanford, Arizona and Iowa State.

It is going to be a situation that we need to go out there and do our best to get either the team or someone to advance on to the NCAA Championships April 18-20 in Birmingham, Ala.

On to Ypsilanti for the MAC Championships

By Brice Biggin
Head coach

We closed our season at the University of Pittsburgh on March 15. While we finished second, we feel like we performed well enough to win the meet. We hit 24 out of 24 routines, but unfortunately we left a couple of little things out there right at the end. We didn’t win, but we were very pleased with the teams performance and how we carried ourselves.

It isn’t easy to refocus after an emotional meet like the one we had a week earlier when we secured the Mid-American Conference regular-season championship against Bowling Green in our last home meet. We struggled a little bit in warmups at Pittsburgh. They just kind of looked like they were going through the motions, so we had a little talk to refocus before the meet. We talked about how last week was high emotion, how it was senior night and the regular-season championship. But now that’s over with. We still have other things we have to accomplish starting today.

To the credit of our athletes, they proved us wrong. You love to see that. It’s fun. After not looking great in warm ups, they responded great.

Now we move on to the Mid-American Conference Championships in Ypsilanti, Mich. 

We’ve talked a lot about not putting anything extra into this meet. If we start trying harder, then we can struggle. This team has done well taking it one meet at a time and not working any different because it is a bigger meet. We have to still go out and do our same routines. Let’s just go out and be consistent.

Gymnastics isn’t like other sports where you may want to pump yourself up. If you go out there too pumped up, you usually screw up. That adrenalin in our sport is sometimes not a good thing. 

In preparation for going to Ypsilanti, we will take things down to a bare minimum. We will often have kids working on different events even if they will not be competing in all of them. Now we take out all of the extras. We’ll get them working on a couple of routines on each event every day and get them out a little earlier than normal. After practicing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday will be a travel day for us. Friday will be a warm-up out there and then Saturday is the competition.

To win we will have to go out and hit our routines and stick the dismounts. There are lots of little tenths you can gain or lose by sticking landings on bars, beam and vault. Probably the team that sticks the most will be the team that wins. It’s something we will focus on a little more this week even though we talk about it all the time. You can do a great routine, but yet when you take a step on the dismount, you are starting from a tenth lower than everyone else. Those teams that stick, after five kids they basically count a fall by not sticking a landing. 

Here is a look back at some of our routines from last week's meet at Pittsburgh:

Refocused with an eye on a MAC regular-season title

By Brice Biggin

Head coach

Going to the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena this past weekend got us into the setting of a big arena, which is something we are going to have to learn how to deal with when we go to the NCAA regionals. All of those regional sites are big facilities.

We have no idea where we will go for the regionals. I could be any one of six spots.

I think we haven’t really had a bad meet all year until this trip to Michigan. That’s something of a positive, in that you never want to perform poorly, but this may give us a little wake-up call. We need to take what happened in Michigan and realize that we are at the end of the season and we need to focus as a team on what is important and how we need focus as a team to be successful. We are going to use that as a positive leading into Thursday’s meet with Bowling Green when the girls know what is at stake.

We have a chance to win a regular-season Mid-American Conference championship on senior night on our own floor. We have to defend our home. We don’t want anyone to come in here and spoil this opportunity. But we have to do a better job as an entire team. 

What has made this team successful is having everyone everyone step up week in and week out. I told the girls that I didn’t think some of them could look at each other and honestly say they gave 100 percent. That has to be refocused.

It’s a short week, so we are doing some things differently. We gave the team Saturday off. Then we came in Sunday and practiced. We’ll practice Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday we will be off. It’s not a great week, but we will still get three solid days of practice. Yesterday was a good workout and we need to focus on being consistent these next few days so that we will be consistent again on Thursday.

We’ll see right from the first event on Thursday if we have refocused. Vault is an event we did well on in Michigan, but it is still an event where we are trying to figure out one or two kids to add in to solidify that event. I think if we have one or two kids step up, that will show us we are ready to compete.

Senior Marie Case will compete for
the last time at the M.A.C. Center
on Thursday vs. Bowling Green

Freshman Jordan Hardison is a young lady who struggled early in the season. She had a bad vault in the Blue & Gold meet and suffered an injury. But she has really stepped up her game and has come back with a vengeance. She has competed great for us on beam and floor. We pushed her very hard on vault yesterday and talked to her about how this is an event she is capable of doing. She needs to be able to concentrate on it like any other event and do what she is capable of to help the team out. To her credit she has worked her tail off.

Another freshman, Skyelee Lamano, is a girl who has been in and out and is working hard to come back from an injury she suffered last year on vault. That has been a bit of a mental comeback trail for her and she is doing better and better. We need her to continue to step forward and give us a good option as well.

Kelsey Lawless is a junior who has competed for us the last few weeks, and while she hasn’t been as consistent as we would like her to in the spot, she has been able to come through. 

Right now we need two of those three to step up and give us two good vaults. If they do it is really going to help this team out.

Again, this is our senior meet. The last time Nikki Moore, Ashley Transue and Marie Case will perform at the M.A.C. Center. They have had good careers here, and obviously Marie Case has been a cornerstone for the last three and a half years. Losing her is going to be tough.

Marie is starting to understand and get that feeling that she is getting close to the end of her college career. As focused as she is, she needs to have a great last meet. For us to be as successful as we need to be, she has to be the leader of the team. She can’t let emotions run into having any type of slip. I don’t expect her to slip. We are going to ride her as long as we can, and we will hope these seniors are sent out the right way in this last meet and of course in the MAC championship.

Movin' on up to No. 23 ... and looking ahead to a trip to Michigan

By Brice Biggin

Head Coach

We have made a little jump up in the rankings from No. 25 to No. 23.

We are doing it mostly on the road, which is even better. When you are competing well on the road and you can go out and hit 24-for-24, that says a lot about how this team is starting to perform.

Kayla Kosmerl had a very good week for us at Ball State. She had struggling a little bit with being able to hit beam routines in meets, and she had her best beam routine by far. That really helped to spark us and it helped out beam score. 

Kayla had a great weekend, but really we didn’t have anyone who had a bad weekend. Overall we hit 27-of-28 routines counting the exhibition routines. We had one exhibition-routine fall, and that was it.

We are becoming a very consistent team. f you look at a lot of the really good teams like LSU, Florida and Alabama, they go out and compete week in and week out. That’s the expectation if you are going to give yourself a chance to be successful regionally and nationally.

This weekend we go on the road again out of conference at the University of Michigan, and the Wolverines are tough. They are a top-10 team. BYU will be there, too, and they are about where we are. So, that’s two very good teams. It is another opportunity to get a good road score to move us up again. I think we will have to go mid-195. If we do, that will give us a chance to move up. When you get into that top 20-to-23, it’s tough to move up because all of those teams are very good.

We will be competing at Michigan’s Crisler Arena, and we’ve had pretty good success there the last couple of times we were there. We had a meet there in the year we made nationals, and then our regional meet was at Crisler. Obviously we competed well there, and so there are some good vibes that hang out there for this team. Hopefully we can go out and be consistent and steady again.

We are getting healthier. Skyelee Lamano had been ill, but she came back last week, competed and did a good job. Hopefully with another week of practice she will be even more solid. Nicolle Eastman is trying to get back in, but she needs some time. She is getting stronger and closer, but she is not quite there yet. The good thing is that everyone else is stepping up. If she comes back, that’s a big bonus. If not, her teammates are getting the job done.

With our win at Ball State we clinched at least a tie for the Mid-American Conference regular season championship. Two weeks from now we need to beat Bowling Green here at the M.A.C. Center to win the championship outright. That’s an opportunity that means a lot to our team. 

That Thursday, March 6, vs. Bowling Green is also the last opportunity for people to see Marie Case compete at home. If you haven’t seen her compete, you are missing out.

Thoughts on a Gymnastics RPI

CRAIG BALLARD

Assistant Coach

Within our coaches organization, the competition committee is looking at everything, whether it is postseason, or we do our regular-season meets, or anything to improve our sport.

We thought the way basketball handles their postseason using RPI and the selection committee was pretty interesting, so we decided to take a look at creating an RPI for gymnastics and see how it comes out.

We are tinkering with an RPI based around winning percentage. It is calculated where 25 percent is your winning percentage, 50 percent is your opponents winning percentage and the other 25 percent is the winning percentage of your opponents opponents. It is all based on how you do and who you compete against.

The metric came out this season, and right now we are No. 6.

Here’s a look at the entire top 10:

1. Florida
2. Alabama
3. UCLA
4. Utah
5. Oklahoma
6. Kent State
7. Nebraska
8. Rutgers
9. Minnesota
10. Michigan

The next Mid-American Conference team is Central Michigan at No. 13.

Florida at No. 1 is the team everyone considers to be the best country right now.

I like the idea of having an RPI. I think it is another thing we for us to look at the sport. I think sometimes fans get confused by the numbers, the 195s and 196s, and stuff like that. This relates to a basketball fan who can say “oh, that’s their power index.” Maybe it will draw some more fans in and help people understand the sport a little bit more.

I also like that it makes winning and losing important. Sometimes gymnastics fans get confused when a team says it had a really good day, but then it lost to everybody.

Whatever happens on that gym on that day also becomes more important than who was judging it. Let’s say we go someplace far away and it is a low-scoring meet where we still win. If both teams are scored low, it is still great. We get our win point, and it takes a little bit of the judging out of it and puts it more in our hands.

While I like the RPI, I think we can tweak the formula a little bit because the actual No. 1 team in the country this week is LSU and the RPI has them at 11th. Maybe there needs to be a little tweaking there, but I still like it. It adds to our sport.

In this week's actual rankings, we moved up from No. 25 to No. 23 with our win at Ball State.

Here's some video from that victory:

Reflections on a thrilling win at Central Michigan

By Brice Biggin

Head coach

We learned this weekend that we have kids with a lot of heart. 

Our team has been a bit down and out this year with injuries and illness,  and then we had a kid come down with pneumonia and another get in a car accident right before our meet at Central Michigan. We scrambled for a lineup and had to add some kids in who had never done what they did before this past weekend.

We were outgunned coming in. There is no doubt about it. Central Michigan is a very good team and we respect that. But our kids showed a tremendous amount of heart with the ability to not give in to the crowd or to the moment. We couldn’t be more proud of them and more proud of the victory.

When you look at faces, they don’t usually lie. You can see fear. You can see doubt. You can see lack of confidence in the way an athlete stares at you or talks to you. I didn’t see any of that this weekend. 

As we were warming up on beam, which was our last event, Central Michigan was creeping back into it quickly. They had some fans in the front few rows who were doing some heckling. I talked to the team and said “listen, we are not going to be able to hold your hand through this. It is time to grow up now. You are going to face situations like this when you have a crowd that may not be the most polite and is trying to do things to get you off of your game. The only way to handle that is to go out and make routines. If you do that, it’ll take care of everything.”

I saw all of our kids nod their heads.

I don’t pull a lot of punches with our kids. They know I am very honest. Marie Case was up last for us and I told her very simply – “the season is on you right now. You need to go out and make this routine. If you want to win a regular-season championship, you have to make a routine.”

She got this little smile on her face. I told her I didn’t care which routine she does. She can either do a back handspring layout-stepout or a back handspring layout-stepout layout-stepout, which is very difficult and more than she needed to do. But that’s Marie.

Marie has such a strong belief in herself because of the way she trains. She trains harder than anyone else and with more consistency than anyone else. She has a fierce determination that she is not going to fail. She is not going to let anyone else down or herself down. She is one of those rare individuals who has such an intensity about her that I’m going to cry the day she leaves. It is going to be impossible to replace her.

It rubs off. I think when Marie’s teammates watch her compete the way she does it builds confidence and it settles down people. Beam is a tough event, and to finish on it in a venue like that and in that kind of setting was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever seen a team do.

There were some other special moments.

Our first bar routine went up and had a major mistake right at the end of her routine. She was in a good routine and had about three steps in her landing. We started out with a 9.55 which is not a good score. That had me worried. Our next kid up, Amiah Mims, had only competed on bars once all year. She has a really nice routine, but it has been a little inconsistent.

When Amiah went to do her release, she was a little far from the bar. When she turned, she reached, and I mean she reached with a purpose that there was no way she was coming off of the bar. That was one of the key things that really started the whole ball rolling for us. Not only did she get back to the bar on her release, but she has struggled with her double layout dismount, and she did it beautifully and stuck the landing. It jumped the scores up and the next kids relaxed a bit and went out and did their job. That was a key spot for us because if she made a mistake, things could have turned everything completely the other way.

Another moment that sticks out for me was on vault. The girl who made the mistake on bars earlier, Kelsey Lawless, was also in the vault lineup for the first time doing a new vault. We needed her, and she did a great job. I told her before that she owed us one. She knew. She accepted it and she did a fantastic job of doing a big vault when we needed it.

When Central Michigan made some mistakes on bars that hurt them. They needed to play catchup and they just ran out of time. 

After the win we stayed at No. 25, but this away score is going to help us. If we can have another good away score this weekend at Ball State, I think we can jump up a little bit. We have some good teams right in front of us like Central Michigan, Ohio State, Washington and North Carolina State. 

These away scores are a premium because you have to count three of them. If you are a really good home team, but you can’t compete on the road, you are not going to be very successful. That’s why we’ve really pushed being consistent on the road. This win at Central Michigan set us up both for the rankings and the regular-season championship. We still have a lot of work for that, too. We are enjoying the moment now, but come Tuesday when we get back into practice we have to bust our butts because we have another step we need to take if we want to win a regular-season championship.

Flip For Cure A Springboard Into Road Swing

By Brice Biggin

Head Coach

It energizes the girls any time we get a crowd like we did last week for the Flip For The Cure.

We needed a big meet, and hopefully it gives us something to look forward to. It’ll be interesting to see what happens the next time we are home March 6 vs. Bowling Green. That will be on a Thursday because the Mid-American Conference Wrestling Championships are that weekend at the M.A.C. Center. 

I’m not sure what competing on a Thursday will do to our attendance because we have a lot of families and kids who come to see us. Will they come out on a Thursday? We are hoping they do.

The Flip For The Cure was a fantastic crowd, and I am very happy that we are getting such great support for the cause. To get that type of crowd here also says a lot about our program, too. Attendance right now for us is very good.

We had two weeks to prepare for the meet with Northern Illinois and we saw the benefit of the work we put in during that time. We had the best performance of the season on beam, and we spent a lot of time on that and hopefully our athletes take some confidence from that performance.

We are gone now for the next three weeks, and they will have to produce like that on the road if we are going to be a good team. We have obviously our biggest test of the year coming up at Central Michigan this weekend, so we need to be able to go out there, relax and be confident.

We’ll find out a little bit this week from our trainer about where Olivia Trout is with her injury. She has been battling an injury for the last two weeks and hasn’t been able to do much of anything. Even if she is healthy this week, I don’t know if she will get enough time in and the repetitions she needs to compete. The good news is we have really had kids step up and fill in spots in the lineup. They’ve just done a great job. It has been kind of a M.A.S.H. unit for us with small injuries that just keep coming. But because of that we’ve been tested and we’ve found answers with kids stepping in and doing the job.

With this weekend, we know Central Michigan is a very good team that has competed well all season long. We have to understand that we go down there focusing on ourselves as a team. We can’t worry about them. Our focus has to be 100 percent on ourselves and how we perform. If we can start out very steady like we did this week, we’ll be fine. We started on bars, and that has been a pretty good event for us. It’s nice to start on an event you feel comfortable with. Those kids have done a very good job. If we start off well on there, then go do some good vaults and keep ourselves right in the meet, then anything can happen in the last two events. 

This is another meet and another MAC team and another score we are looking for to help in our regional ranking. We are 25th in the nation right now and that’s good. If we can stay right around that top 25 and put a couple of good away scores up there, that will help us. They take the top 36, and as long as we stay in that top 36 we’ll be ok. We would like to stay somewhere in the top 28, and that’s a realistic goal for this team. 

Focusing on beam in two weeks of prep for Flip For The Cure

By Brice Biggin

Head Coach

Wins are always nice, especially when they come against Mid-American Conference competition. And we certainly have to be happy any time we go into someone else’s gym and win. That is never easily.

But while we felt fortunate to win, we were not overly happy with some of the scores.

Our bar scoring was just a little tight. We felt like we did some nice bar routines. We were hoping for a little different scoring and just didn’t get it. That hurts our team score, and that’s not a matter of wins and losses, but how it impacts our regional ranking.

We dropped from No. 22 nationally to No. 25. Part of that, though, is our fault because we couldn’t stay on the beam. What we’ll take from this weekend at Western Michigan is that we are still not a good enough beam team. I don’t pull a lot of punches. Right now we are just not a good beam team. We had a couple of individuals do a really good job, but I always tell the team that a couple individuals is not going to win meets. A couple of individuals will not win championships. And right now, we are not good enough to win a championship the way we are competing.

We have a couple of weeks to work before our next meet, which is the Flip For The Cure on Feb. 7 at home against Northern Illinois. In those two weeks we are going to drill routine after routine on the beam in the hope of getting a little more consistency.

We need to get a few people going. Chelsea Drooger is a junior who competed all year last year and had just one fall. She has two falls in four meets this year. We talked and she understands that she needs to be a lot better because she has the talent.

We are still missing Whitnee Johnson to an injury. She was out completely this weekend. That’s a big loss on the vault and the beam, and it will probably be a couple of meets before we get her back.

Two of our girls did a very nice job on the beam, though, with Nicole Radon scoring a 9.750 to lead off. That’s what we are hoping for – at least a 9.7 to lead off, and she did one of the nicest routines we’ve seen in a meet this year. Nicolle Eastman has struggled a bit this year getting her self in gear, but she did by far her best routine in getting a 9.800.

Obviously Marie Case, we can never say enough about what she does. She got a 9.9 from one judge and a 9.8 from another. She just doesn’t let anything affect her. If someone falls in front of her, she stays 100-percent focused.

We have some girls who are close on the beam. Jordan Hardison is a freshman who did an exhibition beam routine. She stayed on and is someone we feel has potential. Amiah Mims is a junior who has had a very good year so far. She is adding a new skill and a new mount that is giving her some trouble. She needs that and until she is consistent with it, we can’t throw her in there yet. Once she gets it she will be a legitimate contributor there. 

That Feb. 7 meet is our premier meet of the year. Northern Illinois is a nice team and we need to come prepared to compete, but obviously a lot goes into that meet with the promoting the Flip For The Cure. It’s not just about the meet. It’s about the cause. 

Especially with this being a female sport, we want to do our part to get the word out there on such an important issue. The money we raise will go Stewarts Caring Place in Akron Ohio. This is a group that supports not only the individual with the disease but how the diagnosis and treatment effects the whole family. They have teen nights, spousal support groups, disease education, husband support groups, elementary age kids events and activities and financial advise groups, all free to the families that contact Stewarts Caring Place. They also provide free wigs for patients, meditation seminars, stress relief groups and all around help for the whole family that this disease effects.

If what we do raises awareness and encourages women to get screened and be proactive against this disease, some people will have a chance to save their lives. With anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer or knows someone who has been diagnosed, they understand the support system they have is very important to the outcome of treatment.

This is an event that is very near and dear to us, so we are hoping to get a great crowd with people who are willing to donate to an important cause.

No. 21 in nation after week 1, looking ahead to another big week

By Brice Biggin
Head Coach

We learned we have some pretty good potential this past weekend.

It is always tough competing that first week of the season, and that is especially true when you are on the road. When you are a couple thousand miles from home it is a little more difficult. 

But we looked very calm as a group at Southwest Missouri State. The girls looked very confident. Warmups went as well as expected, and then when we got out into the competition they didn’t seem to let anything get to them. When you hit 23 out of 24 routines your first time out, that’s pretty good.

We told the girls that it takes a team effort when you go out there and do that well. But freshman Olivia Trout as a freshman competed three events for us for the first time, and she won one event outright, tied for first on beam and then tied for third on floor. That’s an outstanding day for a freshman.

Olivia is really coming a long way with her discipline and her consistency. Those are the things we’ve talked about with her quite a bit.

Marie Case had a normal Marie Case meet with three first places. Really, we had very solid production from everyone. 

Samantha Gordon is a freshman from Florida. She only did floor, but she had a nice floor routine for us. We have a sophomore named Jaymi Baxter who came in with a knee injury after her senior year of high school. She hadn’t competed in almost two years, but she was in two events for us. It’s tough coming back from an injury like that, taking that kind of time off and jumping right in. She did a great job.

Rebecca Osmer, a transfer from Towson, did a fantastic bar routine. She tied for first with Marie Case. It was a beautiful routine.

Now we have a bit of a difficult week because we are coming off of a Sunday meet, getting home very late Sunday night, and then turning around to compete twice this week. We can’t go real hard this week because they will expend a lot of energy Friday and Sunday. We have to find that delicate touch of how much you can do as opposed to not doing too much or doing too little.

I think the girls will be excited because it is a huge week for us. On Friday we have Eastern Michigan coming in for a MAC meet along with George Washington and Rutgers, which are both good teams. Rutgers had a great meet this weekend and I think they are 16th in the country after the first weekend. We will have our hands full.

Sunday is obviously the marquee matchup in Beauty and the Beast with both us and wrestling competing against North Carolina State. It’s a fantastic opportunity for fans to come in and get a chance to see two completely different sports.

Last year was our first Beauty and the Beast event, and it was a big success. I tried to look over and watch some of the wrestling because I really like wrestling, but it is hard as coaches to be able to do that because we are constantly talking with the team or with the next person who is up. But we heard so many nice comments from people who really enjoyed the event, so we are hoping to do it every year.

We won’t juggle the lineup much between Friday and Sunday’s meets unless something happens to force it. We’ll try to stick with the same lineup. We have a little bit of depth, which is good. But every score counts for us. We have to get our best lineup in every match, especially with the competition coming in. There are some kids who are close that if someone has a mistake, that could force a change. Otherwise, wills tick with the same group.

We are getting healthier. Marie Case has been slowly coming back from an injury, and she has made great progress the last two and a half weeks. Sunday was the first time she did floor for us. She is still a little bit sore, so we have to really watch her numbers and what she does this week, but she should be good to go the whole week. 

Nicolle Eastman is starting to come back from her injury. She did a beam for us this past week and did a good job, but we really need her to come back on floor and vault. I’d say it is unlikely she’ll be able to do those events this week. She is making good strides, but we with three days of practice there just isn’t much time.

We got Whitnee Johnson back to do a vault for us, which really helped. She is one of our top vaulters. But she is still out of floor right now and it’ll be a couple of weeks yet for her to get back there. 

We are on the right track. We have a lot of work to do still, but I’m really happy that we are coming off of such a great team effort last week. Any time you can go out and hit your first meet like that, it is exciting. That score put us at 21st in the country. Hopefully we can build on that. Now we come home for two meets and that is a special thing. These student-athletes know how important it is to perform at home and we get two opportunities. Anybody interested in gymnastics and or wrestling on Sunday, it’s a great opportunity to come out to the M.A.C. Center.