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DEKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University women’s gymnastics team travels downstate to compete in the annual State of Illinois Classic versus host Illinois, Illinois State and UIC in Champaign Saturday afternoon.

“It’s a fun meet, it’s a great high-energy meet,” said NIU head coach Sam Morreale. “When it used to sit right before championships, it was kind of a cooler thing because it kind of put you in that realm of hitting every event and rotating in order. The beauty of competition now is there’s a lot more meets like this through the year.”

This is the Huskies’ (7-8, 2-3) third quad meet of the season and second straight. The Huskie gymnasts enjoy competing in the quad meet format. NIU took third at the 26th Annual Masters Classic hosted by Nebraska with a 194.350 last Saturday and second at IGI Chicago Style Meet with a 194.200.

“The kids like going event to event than staggering back and forth and standing around like in a dual meet,” Morreale said. “I think our gymnasts feel more comfortable in this format.”

This weekend’s meet is a dry run of sorts for the MAC Championships in two weeks. The Huskies will begin Saturday’s meet on their best event, the uneven parallel bars.

“The good thing for us is, this week we start on bars,” he said. “Next week, we start on bars and at the championship we start on bars. It gives us a bit of a lead up into the MAC Championships. Our bars’ squad is pretty solid. They’ve been solid all year, for us it’s not a bad place to start.”

The Huskies are averaging 48.786 on bars this season. It’s their best average on any of the four events. Junior Jamyra Carter (Ypsilanti, Mich./Huron) leads the way for the Huskie bars squad. She has finished in first in the last two NIU meets and five overall this season. Carter posted a career-high 9.900 on the event versus Ball State and Seattle Pacific and finished first in the quad meet at Nebraska last week.

NIU’s floor team has been keeping pace with the bars squad, averaging 48.631. The vault and beam teams have shown improvement as the season has progressed. The Huskies had a solid week of practice and Morreale has one goal heading into Saturday’s meet.

“We’re chasing 24-for-24,” he said. “We had a great week of practice this week. We really tightened down on some of those little things. It’s not about being perfect, it’s just about hitting and doing what you’re doing.”

The State of Illinois Classic takes place at Illinois’ Huff Hall and starts at 4 p.m. CT. Live streaming and live stats will also be available on fightingillini.com.

-NIU-