Back to work and looking ahead to Southeast Missouri State

By Brice Biggin
Head Coach

We will be in Southeast Missouri State on Jan. 12 for what will be a very good competition.

They are a much improved team that that really made a push for regionals last year. Their coach has the program moving in a good direction

For us, we need this to get our feet wet. We don’t know really what to expect from this team yet this year

We have practiced very well, but we are still nursing some injuries and don’t know 100 percent yet who we are going to have. Even if they are able to compete on Sunday, they will be competing at less than 100 percent.

Like the Blue & Gold with Pittsburgh on Dec. 6, I think this is another very good opportunity for us to see some of our younger kids and to put them under some pressure where they need to understand they have to compete this year.

Injury wise, I think we will have Marie Case back on floor and vault. We didn’t have her at either spot against Pittsburgh.

I think we will also get Whitnee Johnson back on vault. She is day-by-day. One day she’ll come in and the injury won’t be good. Then the next she’ll come in and be ok. She needs to tough it out because we’ll need her over there. Vault isn’t necessarily our weak area, but losing a couple of kids hurts our depth there.

We did a little bit of a mock meet yesterday on floor and didn’t do a very good job, and that was some of our upperclassmen, which was disappointing. 

I think some of our problem is that it is hard to get in shape this quickly for the season when you have had two and a half weeks off. It’s amazing what two weeks will do to a kids body. If you are not practicing four or five days a week, your timing goes, your strength goes and your endurance goes. They had just gotten to the point where they were starting to hit pretty well, and then all of a sudden you get two and a half weeks weeks off. Then you have 12 days to get back into shape.

We started back up on Dec. 27 and they haven’t had a break yet. It has been two-a-day practices non stop since they returned. They’ve been sore and tired, but their attitude has been good. They are working hard and they understand it is a grind. It takes this type of work to come into this first competition and expect to do well.

This trip will be a good opportunity to see how tough our kids are because you have to be a better team to compete on the road. Usually we compete pretty well here in Kent, and in the last couple years we really stressed performing on the road. They did that really well at that last year, but this is a new team with new challenges and new faces. We need to see where we are.

We have to keep getting healthy and get these younger kids ready. In our sport, kids come in as freshmen and are used to competing in only three important events the whole year. But here every meet is important and its a huge culture shock to them because they aren’t used to practicing with the intensity that you have to hit and you have to hit right now. You don’t have a choice.

Olivia Trout is doing an outstanding job as a freshman. She competed in two events against Pittsburgh and did well in both floor and beam. For a freshman to come in and do well on beam is a huge bonus for us. She has added vault, so she’ll be doing three events now for us. She was not a practice person when she first got here, but we’ve been able to stress to her about how important consistency is and to her credit she has really stepped up to the challenge and made huge strides.

She is really the only freshman who is making an impact, which is disappointing. We are going to have to get a lot more from our freshmen if we are going to be at our best this year.