March 5, 2010
DeKALB, Ill. - The Northern Illinois gymnastics team will step out of Mid-American Conference competition and look to return to its winning ways Saturday when the Huskies travel to Chicago to face the UIC Flames at the PE Building on the UIC Campus. The meet begins at 5 p.m. (Central).
The Huskies (6-4, 2-3 MAC) will be looking for their first road win of the 2010 campaign at a familiar site. NIU took second place (behind Illinois) in the State Championships held at the PE Building last year. No matter the location, Northern Illinois Head Coach Mark Sontag knows what he wants to see out of his team heading into the stretch run of the season.
"We're looking to go into Chicago and improve on our hit percentage from last week," he said. "We counted a couple of misses last week [in a meet against Central Michigan] and we still haven't had that perfect meet. We want to work within ourselves and get ourselves as clean of a competition as possible. We need to get the bumps out of our routines."
Depth on the 2010 team has led to a wealth of line-up options for Sontag, something the 11th-year head coach sees as the sign of a program that is getting stronger. Thirteen of the fourteen healthy and available gymnasts have been in the line-up on at least on event this season.
"The competitiveness of our lineup is an indicator of a healthy program," Sontag said. "There is not a lot of separation between the top and bottom of our line-up this year, and that has not always been the case. We're still looking at line-up positions on a couple of events and it's also about trying to determine who's hot and who's not on a given week."
One Huskie who has been hot all season long is Natalie Blum (Homer Glen, Ill./Lockport Township HS). The senior competed as an all-arounder in the first four meets of the season while filling in for injured teammates, and achieved a career best score of 38.725. Her season bests in individual events include a team-leading 9.800 on vault, 9.650 on bars, 9.600 on balance beam and 9.825 (tied for team-high) on floor exercise.
"Natalie has worked her way back into the all-around again and we could see her back up on beam this week," Sontag said. "Ashley Guerra (uneven parallel bars and balance beam) has looked very good in practice and so have Sarah Hurley (vault, floor exercise) and Tanya Rachan (all-around). We are seeing good things from a lot of people, now we need to see consistency. Who will go up and hit the routine every time?"
The UIC meet is Northern Illinois' closest road trip of the year versus an opponent with which the Huskies are very familiar. The teams compete in a dual meet format this week and will be joined by Illinois State and Illinois March 20 at the State Championships.
"We're looking forward to making the short trip down the road to Chicago," Sontag said. "We've had a nice, friendly rivalry with them. We always look forward to meeting the instate schools because so many of our gymnasts know each other. This meet also set up the state meet in a couple of weeks."
Following Saturday's dual meet, Northern Illinois has one remaining Mid-American Conference dual on its schedule, March 13 at Eastern Michigan, before the State Championships (March 20) and the MAC Championships (March 27) close out the season.
-- NIU --
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