Confident Chippewas Eye MAC Championships
3/17/2017 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - Any team wants to be performing at its peak when it most counts.
Based on the past two weeks, it's no wonder that the Central Michigan gymnastics team goes into the Mid-American Conference Championships brimming with confidence.
The Chippewas enter the Championships - Saturday (2 p.m.) at Bowling Green - riding a wave of momentum after back-to-back outstanding performances in dual-meet victories over Rutgers and Northern Illinois.
CMU posted a 196.375 score against Rutgers two weeks ago. That was the highest score by a MAC team this season. That mark stood for six days, when the Chippewas bettered it last Saturday with a 196.575 total in beating NIU on Senior Day at McGuirk Arena.
"I feel really confident," said Rachel Carr, one of four CMU seniors who had a hand in that score, the fifth-best in program history. "Everyone just does their part, and when everyone does their part it turns out well. I think the confidence level -- we know how to compete we know how to perform in that situation."
The Chippewas finished 3-3 and tied for third in the MAC regular-season standings. Eastern Michigan (5-1) placed first and last year won the MAC Championships.
All that said, CMU may be the team with the target on its back on Saturday, the result of its two most-recent performances and its tradition. CMU has won the MAC Championships 15 times, far and away the most in league history.
"It was a slower start at the beginning of the year, but it's falling into place now because of the hard work that we've put into all of our training - physical training and mental training," senior Caroline Fitzpatrick said. "It's paying off and developing into what we envisioned from the beginning."
That tradition perhaps played a role in the Chippewas' performance last Saturday against NIU. The Huskies entered the meet needing a win to claim a share of the regular-season league title, which would have been the program's first.
Coach Jerry Reighard, who has guided CMU to each of those 15 titles at the MAC Championships, didn't dwell on the fact that the Huskies were poised to win a title. But he did use it, to a degree, to motivate his team, which on Saturday will look to finish first at the MAC Championships for the first time since 2014.
"I said, 'You know, NIU is coming after us, and we can be a spoiler,' and I just let it go," Reighard said. "I don't think that was the theme of (the meet) for my team, but there is some pride. We needed to do this for ourselves, but the message, I hope, is that we're in the driver's seat and that sends a lot of messages to other programs.
"There's places where we can get better, but quite honestly, I'll take a duplication of (the NIU) meet and I think we'll be in the driver's seat."
The four seniors - Fitzpatrick, Carr, Shaila Segal and Kirstin Stambaugh - were members of that 2014 squad.
"We know what it feels like to win," Stambaugh said. "We want our teammates to have that same feeling and to have the drive to do it again (on Saturday)."
Players Mentioned
