Welcome back, Pioneer gymnastics fans! 

This has been an exciting week for the TWU gymnastics team. We started the week off reaping the benefits of the incentive from the previous meet and had a shorter than normal practice Sunday. It was nice to have a Sunday practice because we had none of the stresses of school and were able to focus solely on what we do best--gymnastics. This week of training has been very important for our team as we continue to take steps forward. We prepared hard all week to compete against OU and Illinois State on Friday. 

Because OU is so close, we traveled to Norman by bus the day of the meet. Coach always takes the whole team when we are able to travel by bus. Sadly freshman Marcella Fallon was unable to come because she was sick with the flu. We missed her a lot! It is great to have everyone together, for the most part, at an away meet. It helps to boost the energy and truly bring us together. On the trip up I-35, we napped and relaxed in order to prepare ourselves for the meet. When we arrived at the Lloyd Noble Center, we had very high expectations. We were competing against Illinois State, a conference opponent that we will face in just a few weeks. We had pretty good warm-ups and as we prepared to start Coach offered yet another incentive! He said he was feeling generous and what he offered was one of his best yet. For every stuck landing or 9.7 and above routine we received five minutes off practice. He then threw in, if we stuck four landings in a row or had four routines in a row of 9.7 or above on floor that he would let us out of practice on Sunday.
 
We started on bars and we had to count one fall, unfortunately. Beam did an excellent job of not trying to make up for mistakes on bars. We just did our routines just as we would do them in practice. We hit 6 for 6! Floor had some small mistakes with some missed landings, but overall they had a good performance. Vault was our final event and we had to count another fall. We had some unfortunate mishaps, but there were also some good performances to be proud of. Freshman Chaynade Knowles landed the best double Arabian she has ever done on floor. We did not get out of practice, but received 25 minutes off of Sunday's practice. Beam improved and did not count a fall. We also recorded a team score of 191.3 which - if memory serves us right - is the highest we've had at OU in some time. We have much room for improvement so that statistic means we will not get complacent. We showed confidence and held our heads high. It was unfortunate to come in third and especially against a conference team. We will use it as motivation to become even better as we will face them again at the MIC championships in two weeks. We realize that it is the little things like landings that are going to make all the difference in the end. Every tenth matters! 

We enter this week’s training armed with a true mission. Friday is senior night in which we will honor our eight departing seniors at their last home meet. We are training this week with the mindset of improving from last week’s meet, but also we want to send the seniors off with a bang. We wish to make this a special night for them and one they will always remember. At our last home and regular season meet we will be competing against Arkansas, Bowling Green and Penn. Join us Friday March 13th at 7 p.m. Helps us honor our seniors and cheer our team on to victory! Go Pioneers! 

Alexa Brennan
Junior