Women's Gymnastics | March 8
DeKalb, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University women's gymnastics team begins the "championship" portion of its 2019 season Saturday when the Huskies travel to Champaign, Illinois for the 2019 State of Illinois Classic, the annual meet featuring the four Division I gymnastics teams in the state of Illinois. NIU will take on host Illinois, Illinois State and UIC in the quad meet, which begins at 2 p.m. in Huff Hall on the Illinois campus.
NIU (11-4) is coming off a 193.350-192.050 win over Illinois State (2-8) last week in the Convocation Center, while the Huskies are 0-2 versus the Flames (13-3) this season. NIU and Illinois (8-8) will meet for the first time in 2019.
"The state meet is super cool," said NIU gymnastics head coach
Sam Morreale. "We've done it every year for a long time, there's a lot of familiarity, there's a lot of camaraderie. I think it's a fun event, that if it falls on a good weekend, a lot of Illinois gymnasts come and watch it. And it's always nice to see where you stack up in the state. It's also a pretty big meet for us on a lot of levels."
Those levels include raising NIU's National Qualifying Average to put itself back in the hunt for a potential NCAA Regional bid, which this year go to the top 36 ranked teams in the country, and giving the Huskies momentum heading into a dual meet next week at Central Michigan which will decide the MAC regular season champion. NIU then hosts the MAC Championships a week later in the Convocation Center.
The last two weeks, the Huskies have scored 193.350 versus Illinois State after a tough day on the uneven parallel bars, and 193.975 at UIC at a tightly-scored meet that included a fall on balance beam.
"We need to knock it out of the park these last three meets," Morreale said. "We need to be 195 or better, or at least in that range just to even get back in the [NCAA Regionals] discussion, and we feel like we are a 195 team. We have a good opportunity based on what scores we would be able to replace."
Morreale is also looking for his individual leaders on each event to improve their standing toward potential NCAA Regional invitations as currently
Cinny Lamberti (Grayslake, Ill./Grayslake HS) on vault,
Morgan Hooper (Lincoln, Neb./St. Pius X HS) on uneven parallel bars,
Mia Lord (McCordsville, Ind./Hamilton Southeastern HS) on balance beam and
Anna Martucci (Clarkston, Mich./Our Lady of the Lakes HS) on floor exercise have an opportunity for postseason competition.
On Saturday, those four and all of the Huskies have the opportunity to compete for the titles of State Champion and All-State (top three in each event), while NIU as a team looks to break Illinois' strangle-hold on the team title at this meet, and more importantly put together a solid meet across all four events to prepare itself for the next two weeks.
"We're really just looking to get back on track with all four events," Morreale said. "It's a great opportunity for us with the last two weekends coming up to get ourselves right. We're doing a lot of things very well, we just have to do everything well. This team has shown really good resilience, none of our events are an issue, it's just stepping up and getting it done."
Saturday's meet can be seen on BTN Plus (subscription) and on FloGymnastics. See the links above.
-- NIU --
