Jan. 22, 2010
NORMAL< ill.="" -="">
Illinois State gymnastics will continue their run at home by hosting Western Michigan, Air Force Academy and Wisconsin-LaCrosse, Sunday, January 24. The meet is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. in Horton Field House.
As of this week, the Redbirds are ranked no. 37 in the nation, and head coach Bob Conkling is confident his team will perform well.
"Preparation has been more intense this week," Conkling said. "Not because it is a quad-meet, but because we felt we needed to step it up in workouts to perform higher quality routines on each event. I expect we will do very well in this meet and perform with more consistency than last week."
The Redbirds narrowly lost to conference rivals, Southeast Missouri State, last week when they struggled on the last two rotations.
"We have put more effort into the balance beam and floor exercise workouts this week," Conkling said. "I expect the team to do well on all four events in order to get a high team score. The team is hungry to do well on every event, and I believe it's going to happen for them this week."
Against SEMO last week, freshman, Tori Sarantakis, ranked first on the vault with a career-high, 9.825. Erica Schick and Apollonia Barrientos secured first and second place on the uneven bars, with scores of, 9.775 and 9.700, respectively. Another first place was taken by sophomore, Melissa Mann, on the balance beam with a 9.8. Conkling was impressed by the athletes performances last weekend, but knows as a team they can improve.
"I am looking to the whole team to perform well this weekend," Conkling said. "The upperclassmen have been solid in the first two meets, but the underclassmen are feeling confident for this meet and have been pushing themselves in practice this week. I'm looking forward to seeing the result."
The Redbirds will enter the meet with scores on their side. Of the four teams, Illinois State is the top-ranked in the nation. In their two meetings last season, the Redbirds swept UW - LaCrosse. The `Birds have not competed against Western Michigan since 2006, when ISU emerged victorious.
GoRedbirds.com: Your online source for Illinois State Athletics, tickets, TRC gifts, multimedia, Redbird merchandise, photos and more.
