Hello and thank you to our faithful Michigan Gymnastics fans! I wish
that I had a more glowing report for you this week. The truth is that
I am very disappointed with our performance from this past weekend and
from the direction that we have been going the last few weeks. I am not
alone, as our team is not at all happy with the way things have been
going either. That is the good thing!! Sometimes we seem to loose control
of things for a period of time, but I think if we can realize what needs
to be done and do it then we can right the ship and get ourselves back
on the track that we all know we should be on! This is a
talented team with a lot of ability and potential. For us the MOST important
thing will be that we are ready to COMPETE come the end of the season.
Right now we need to refresh ourselves and take a look at what we have
left. There are only three more regular season meets and then Big Ten's,
Regionals, and hopefully Nationals. These next three meets will be important
to our ranking and our regional seeding. After that it will all be head
to head competition, and we need to be ready!
A recap for those who couldn't make the trip out west with us. We flew into Las Vegas and then drove the rest of the way to Utah. It wasn't that bad, but we were tired and ready for bed Thursday night! Our warm ups for the meet were awesome! The best we have ever warmed up bars in a long time! Nellie started us off on bars in the meet and did really well! After that however things took a turn, and we ended up with our lowest bar total of the year. I thought we did good vaults but still struggled to stick landings and gave up several tenths there. Floor was about our best event of the night. Although we had both Becca and Jenny out of the line up. Becca with a strained achilles and Jenny with a sore ankle. Katie and Huneth stepped in and both hit solid routines. Beam started out very strong, as Carol, Jenny, and Nellie all hit really nice routines. Unfortunately after that the last three routines all had major bobbles or a fall. So the bottom line was that we were not able to hit a 49 on any event and our team score came in at a 195.15.
On Saturday, we drove back to Las Vegas and spent the day walking and looking around. Most of the team has been there before, but it was a new experience for some. Nellie was our little travel guide and she had researched and told us all when each casino was having their little shows out front. We got to see the fountain at the Belagio, the "pirate show" at Treasure Island and the volcano erupt at the Mirage! Thanks Nellie. After that we grabbed a team dinner and headed back to the airport for the long flight home!
We will train here all week before getting back on a plane to head to Denver. We are going to work hard this week both physically and mentally to be prepared for a much better showing next weekend!! Keep your fingers crossed and send us all your good wishes heading into the last stretch of the season!!
Thanks and Go Blue,
Bev
Hello Michigan gymnastics fans! Well, if you were at the meet on Friday night, I'd like to say Thank you! We were up against a few other pretty big events on campus. If you were there you also know that UNH had a pretty major injury during their vault warm-up. I'm happy to say that the athlete will be OK! She did have an injury to her neck but no damage to her spinal column. Anyone who would like to send on well wishes can contact her through her coach Gail at: gailg@cisunix.unh.edu. The athlete's name is Jamie.
We started out on vault with our best performance of the year. I thought we were rolling! The injury to the UNH athlete happened during the warm up for the second rotation. We continued to compete on bars while UNH waited to take care of the injured athlete. Our Bars went well, but then we had to wait until UNH competed on vault and then rotated before we could continue with the meet. It was quite a long delay in the meet. I'm afraid we allowed it to take the wind out of our sails a little. We had some rocky beam routines, and for the first time this season we counted a fall. We finished on floor and did ok but not as well as we have in the last few meets so it was a little bit of a disappointment after we had started out so strong on vaulting.
I am not making excuses, because we should have been able to handle the delay just like it was a bye rotation at Big Ten's or Regionals. Regardless, we learned something from the experience, and I hope it will help us down the road. Unfortunately in our sport injuries happen, we must always take every precaution to make sure that the athlete is OK!
The exciting part of the evening was that we were able to raise $6,109 for the Coach Carr Cancer Fund. So THANK YOU to all of you that bought T-shirts and sponsored the event! We appreciate your help and support for such a worthwhile cause. This is something that has affected so many of our lives, and I am glad we were able to do a little something to help out.
Go Blue,
Bev
Hello! We are now approaching the half way point of our regular season.
It has gone by so fast. We had our first loss of the season on Saturday
to a very strong Utah team. I felt like we had a better than average meet,
but not great meet. At this point in the season, we expect not to be counting
falls, but we hope to be sticking more dismounts and counting
our top 6 scores.
I've been telling you that as a team we need to improve on vaulting. Well that is what got us in this meet. We actually did good vaults, but we just aren't landing them. The steps and hops are costing us at least a tenth on every vault. We gave up more than five tenths Saturday night. We have already talked about it, and the team seems very eager to get working on those landings! We were disappointed not to be able to use Becky Bernard on bars. Her foot was pretty sore, and she wasn't able to go. The good news is that the rest of the squad did a great job and we ended up with our season high in that event anyway. But with her in there we still have room for improvement.
Beam was good, but we haven't put all six routines together in the same meet yet. Every person has had their great routines and their routine with a bobble or a fall. We just need to be hitting all six routines strong at the same time. It is not a huge difference, but when you have to drop what is usually a top score and count something less it adds up by the end of the meet. We had that happen on three events Saturday. Floor was kind of the same as beam. We hit with the exception of one routine, we didn't have to count the fall, but we counted a routine with a slightly lower score.
We are excited to be at a point where we can be within .3 of a team
at the top of the rankings and still know that we have not peaked yet.
We know the areas that we need to keep working on, and this team is very
motivated to do that, believe me! We are in the gym today and working
on those things. I am so pleased with the attitude of this team.The
work ethic has never been a question. I believe that we will be where
we need to be come March and April. We need to stay healthy that is always
a major factor for sure. We need to get Becky healthy and back in line
ups. If we can do that, I am very excited about this team's opportunities
through the end of the season!
Stay tuned! Go Blue!!
Bev
Hello Michigan Gymnastics fans! A quick recap from last weekend: I was
pleased, very pleased! We started on beam and didn't fall but had more
than our share of wobbles. After that we rebounded to have again our best
floor performance of the season. 49.50! I hope that can continue. Vault
is still the event where we need the most improvement, but it won't happen
overnight. Tachi has really come on strong in this event which has been
great!! We are still pushing hard for Nellie and Lauren to get some new
vaults into the line-up. Bars went great. We were able to use Becky this
weekend, and she did awesome! Her foot is
still sore so we must tread lightly for sure, but we hope to be able to
keep her in on that event.
Looking ahead, Utah comes to town. This is going to be a great event! Utah is currently #2 in the nation and we're #4, so the gymnastics will be incredible. This has become one of our greatest rivalries, although it is a very respectful rivalry. We enjoy competing with Utah both at home and away. This is one of the nations finest programs and one that we have strived to emulate as we have built our program here at Michigan, so to be able to now compete in a rivalry with them is fantastic! Our scores so far this season have been extremely comparable, so DO NOT MISS this meet! We will need every one of our fans to be there and to be loud!!! You will hopefully have some great stuff to be excited over. Crisler arena 7:30pm Sat. Feb 11th. Don't miss it.
We will also be selling our Coaches Care Challenge t-shirts at the meet. PLEASE make sure you help us in our efforts to support the Coach Carr Cancer Fund through the Univ. of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. We will be selling t-shirts that we want you to wear to the Feb 17th meet in a show of support. 100% of the money raised from the t-shirt sales will go toward the fund. The shirts are only $10 so buy one for a friend also :-)
Go Blue,
Bev
I'm sorry that I was a few days delayed in getting out this week's briefing. It's been busy around the office and in the gym! I was so pleased with our first home meet. I was really excited about the crowd that we had as well. A special thanks to the whole K-grams crew that helped us put on another great event for local school children.
The team was really looking forward to competing at home and it showed. We had our highest team score of the season, but it was our improvement on floor that I was most impressed with. We looked totally different this week as a team on floor. We were more confident in our performances, and our landings were more solid than a week ago. 49.225 was our season high so far but there is still room for improvement. Joanne Bowers our floor coach has been pushing to get these routines going, and she did a great job preparing the team for Friday night!
We began the meet on vault and preformed well, but this is the event where as a team we need to improve the most. We are still hoping that we can get one or two more people able to go into the vault line up with 10.0 SV vaults. Nellie has a yurchenko layout full that is coming along but not ready just yet. Lauren continues to work her handspring front pike with a half, and we are hopeful that soon we will be able to use that in competition. Bars went well, and we are continuing to hit on that event. We are currently ranked #1 in the country on this event so I guess its going pretty well!
Beam is improving, and it is one of those events where you just have
to have everyone hitting on the same day. There is very little room for
error on this event. On bars or floor you can miss a handstand or not
quite land a tumbling pass perfectly and still hit. On beam the
slightest error and your on the floor. We hit four of six routines REALLY
well, and the one fall we had was pretty uncharacteristic, so I am looking
forward to beam being a strong event for us this year! We are currently
ranked 3rd in the country on beam so we are doing just fine. I already
mentioned floor, but I was really happy with what I saw there. Jenny Deiley
started us off with a beautiful routine that scored a 9.875. Jenny had
a great meet all around which was nice. She had started a little slower
than normal, but we think she is on track now and between she and Lindsey
Bruck we have our one-two punch.
Our freshmen continue to do well also. Tachi has really started to shine!
She is a little performer!! :-) Huneth is doing well also. The bad news
is that Becky is still out with a fractured bone in her foot. It is a
very small fracture and it seems to be healing, so we
hope to be able to use her on bars, maybe for Friday's meet. Beam will
probably be another couple of weeks, but we are keeping our fingers crossed
that it keeps feeling better each day!
Well, Friday we are off to the Michigan Classic in Mt. Pleasant. All 5 teams in the state of Michigan will compete for the state bragging rights for the year. If your up for a drive we would love to see you in Mt. Pleasant to cheer us on Friday night at 7pm.
Go Blue!
Bev
Now that we have two away meets behind us, I am really looking forward to having our home opener this weekend! I know our athletes are excited, and we hope to have a big crowd for Jan. 27th against Ohio State!
I'll back up here for a moment to talk about our trip to Penn State.
PSU has been getting better and better each of the last few years. They
have a strong team and will give us some great competition at Big Ten's
once again. We have had close meets with them the last several times and
this one was no exception. They began the meet on vault. Since
there were four teams in the meet, we rotated in Olympic order from where
we started. Cornell started on bars, West Virginia on the beam, and us
on floor. Floor is a hard event to start with, but we know that sometimes
we have to do it. We struggled a little here and there and counted a few
low landings or stumbles but no falls.
We could see that Penn State had hit vault, but scores were tight on that event. We followed them throughout the meet. I thought our vaults were improved slightly over last weekend, even though our scores didn't reflect it. Although the judging was tight, I think it was fair throughout the meet, so that is what really matters. We hit bars really well, and that event was our highlight of the meet. We closed out the meet on beam once again, and once again pulled out the performances we needed to to win the meet. This was not our best beam performance overall, but we had three really solid routines, one fall, and two others that fought to stay on even though they could have given up. I hope our team is learning that even in close meets we can be aggressive and confident on beam. If we are gaining that confidence, it will pay off down the road. I guarantee it!
Neither PSU or Mich. counted any falls in the meet. So this is our second
meet where that has been the case. Teams across the country are getting
better and better, and the parity has never been greater! We ended up
edging Penn State by .425, so you can see how important staying on the
beam was in that final rotation. Many meets this year will be
won or lost by margins of less than 1 or 2 tenths of a point. We preach
every day to our athletes that fighting for every tenth is so important!
Now they can see why! We still have a lot of work to do and improvements
to make. We know that. But that is the fun of competing! Each week we
make our goal to improve! If we can do that, then we will be just fine
come March and April.
I hope to see ALL of you on Fri. night at Crisler at 7:30 PM to cheer us on when we meet our conference rival Ohio State!!
Go Blue!!
Bev
The 2006 season is officially underway!! I am very pleased and proud of the entire team for how they came out of the gate this year! We had a very nice Christmas break and only eight days to prepare for our first meet when we got back. Not just any first meet, but an away meet against one of the top six programs in the country who already had a meet under their belt. Whew, we knew it would be challenging, but they really came through like pro's.
We had the typical visiting team rotation, starting on bars and ending on beam. The meet was extremely close all the way through. After the first event, we led by only a few tenth's, but after the second, they led. Going into the last rotation, we led by 0.175 and they had floor while we were on beam. It doesn't get much tighter than that. We had Huneth (a freshman) lead off for us on beam, and she stuck her routine. We had one fall in the middle of the line-up, but the last two performers nailed and sealed the win by .025, or so we thought! But Nebraska had an inquiry on a floor routine, and the judge changed her score to increase their team total by, guess what, .025. So the end result was a tie! It was a suitable ending for a great meet between two very good teams who both had a good night.
Looking a little more closely at the meet, I was really happy with how well the freshmen did in their first collegiate meet! Both Tatchi and Becky hit great bar routines, with Becky scoring a 9.95 in her debut! I teased her afterwards that we had expected perfection and she just didn't get it done! YEA right! She was awesome!! Due to a strained achilles, that was the only event that Becky competed in. But what an event it was. Huneth competed on both floor and beam in our lead off position and did really well getting us started on the right track. Bruck and Deiley both competed All-Around and ended up with 39 plus total. They are going to be very important to us this year in every event. Lauren once again gave us her 9.9 bar set that we have come to count on and also did a nice vault. Nellie, Becca, Carol, and Katie all contributed great routines in their event specialties, and this year the strength of our team will be in our event specialists!
We can go into the gym today and know what we need to work on to improve
and that will be our goal each week of the season. We need to keep building
on what we do each week and stay healthy! If we can do that, I am confident
that this will be a really fun and successful season for us!! Make sure
you have Jan. 27th on your calendar - 7:30pm Crisler
Arena. It is our first home meet vs. Ohio State Univ. and we need to have
a great showing for our home debut!! Hope to see you there and Go Blue!!
Bev