DeKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University gymnastics team hits the road, Sunday, to compete in Muncie, Ind. against the Ball State University Cardinals at 12 p.m. CST.
 
"It's going to be interesting to get the MAC slate started," said NIU head coach Sam Morreale. "This will be our first step toward being MAC Champions, which is what we want to do. Bigger than that, we are competing against that 194.825 that we scored that first week. We're trying to chase and repeat. We'll learn a lot about us this weekend."
 
Last week, the Huskies started the season off with a record high first meet score of 194.825 against Iowa, Western Michigan and Lindenwood. The Huskies are hoping for a similar outcome this week and will use the same lineup with minimal changes.
 
"This week, we want to clean up the little hiccups we had, but we started out about as well as we could, and what we did was expected," said Morreale. "They just need to do that again. I kind of tease them that it needs to become kind of boring, where were doing the same thing over and over. That's consistency. We don't want to make it a rollercoaster ride. We just want to get to the top of the mountain and keep chipping away."
 
To build on last week's performances, the team will be looking to juniors Katherine Prentice (Indianapolis, Ind./Roncalli) and Ashley Potts (Oakwood Hills, Ill./Prairie Ridge), who earned first and third respectively as all-around competitors last week, but will also be relying on everyone else to hit their marks.
 
Senior Courtney Dowdell (Lynwood, Ill./Thornton Fractional South) also impressed last week with 9.825 scores on both uneven parallel bars and floor earning Mid-American Conference Specialist of the Week following the quad meet. Dowdell will be a contributor to changing the lineup by competing vault this week as well.
 
Huskie fans can watch this week's meet online for free via BallStateSports.com or follow scoring with Live Stats.
 
-NIU-