Women's Gymnastics | January 16

DeKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University women's gymnastics team makes its home debut Friday when the Huskies play host to Western Michigan at the NIU Convocation Center. The unique "Beauty and the Beast" meet features the NIU gymnastics and NIU wrestling teams competing side-by-side on the floor of the Convocation Center. Admission is free.
 
Prior to the beginning of the gymnastics competition at 7 p.m., NIU will unveil the 2019 MAC Gymnastics Championship banner with several seniors from the 2019 team on hand to do the honors. The banner unveiling will begin at approximately 6:45 p.m. in the arena.
 
"It's always fun to come home and compete in our home venue," said NIU head coach Sam Morreale. "We feel very comfortable here and the Beauty & the Beast Meet is great for our fans and great for the team to experience it. It's loud, so from a concentration standpoint, it helps to compete in that atmosphere. We're excited about the banner, obviously we've never done that before so I hope people will be there in time to see it."
 
NIU (1-0, 1-0 MAC) opened the season with a narrow 193.175-193.125 victory at Kent State Sunday. The Huskies overcame a 1.6-point deficit after the first rotation and overtook the Flashes with a 48.950 score on the final event, the balance beam.
 
Huskies Mia Lord, Tara Kofmehl and Morgan Hooper claimed event titles on the balance beam, vault and uneven parallel bars, respectively, while freshman Brookelyn Sears won the all-around competition.
 
Morreale said NIU will use the experience gained in the opening meet as they work to improve in each meet this season.
 
"Last week we had a very good [meet] minus one event," Morreale said. "I feel like every week we're going to get better, not only from a physical standpoint, and who is in the line-up standpoint, but every time you compete, you're going to get better. We're trying to improve us – take out our misses, clean up the landings.  I definitely feel we can up the ante."  
 
The meet will be available to watch on Huskies All-Access (subscription, no audio) with Live Scoring here.  
 
-- NIU --