NORMAL, Ill. – It was a complete sweep of the weekly Midwest Independent Conference honors on Wednesday for Illinois State, as freshman Alana Laster was honored as the league's Newcomer of the Week and with its Performance of the Week award and junior Angelica Labat was voted the Gymnast of the Week once again.
The weekly honors are the first for Laster in her young career at Illinois State and the newcomer of the week award is the second for a Redbird gymnast this season. The gymnast of the week honor for Labat is her third of the season and second in as many weeks and is her ninth overall in her ISU career.
Laster was solid all weekend long for the Redbirds in their pair of meets with Northern Illinois. On Friday, she posted three individual event top-10 finishes including a tie for fourth place on beam (9.700). She followed that up on Sunday by setting a new career high in the all-around at NIU with a score of 38.700 to finish fourth. That was highlighted by a first-place finish on vault with a career-high score of 9.925, which is the highest individual event score of the season for a Redbird gymnast. She also tied for first place on floor (9.875) to wrap up a great performance. Overall, her performance helped the Redbirds post a season-high team score of 195.250 and set three new event season bests for the Redbirds.
Labat picked up two more all-around wins last weekend against Northern Illinois and has now won the all-around in five of the team's seven meets this year. In Friday night's win over NIU, Labat won the all-around competition tying her season best score of 39.275 set the week prior against Bowling Green. She tied for first on bars (9.875) and was third on both vault (9.825) and beam (9.775) to come away with the victory. She followed that up with another all-around win in the return trip to DeKalb on Sunday, this time with a score of 39.200. Labat tied for first place on floor with a season-high score of 9.875 and tied for second on vault (9.850).
The Redbirds return to action on Friday at the annual GymQuarters Invitational in St. Charles, Missouri, where they will compete against Iowa State, Southeast Missouri and Lindenwood.
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