Cardinals Bringing Competitive Fire Into Final Home Meet

MEET COVERAGE
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Heading into the final home meet of the season, the Ball State gymnastics team has turned up its competitive fire. And being that it's the program's Senior Day, it was fitting that the seniors drove the competition during this week's workouts. Kaitlyn Menzione split the Cardinals into groups and the team drew up some games to get the competitive fires burning ahead of this week's meet with Central Michigan.

"This week, Kaitlyn stepped up and made practice a little more fun by having some competitive games going on," head coach Joanna Saleem said. "They're having their own contests, which has increased the quality of practice and there's a lot of pride."

The stakes for these games? Only the gymnasts know for sure.

"I'm not sure. I think it's something about what they get to wear," Saleem said. "But there are some bragging rights to help them tap into their competitive spirit."

Ball State is coming off an impressive week in which it had a season-high score at Pittsburgh (195.000) before winning a tri-meet at home last Sunday. Recent success has been spurred by improvement on the balance beam. Arden Hudson won beam at Pitt (9.875) followed by a good routine from Menzione (9.825). The Cardinals then had four of the top five routines on beam in the home tri-meet two days later.

"Overall for the last two meets, our overall approach to beam has been different and we need to continue that," Saleem said. "Now, we're trusting each other. We've had a good week of practice so I'm hoping we'll have four solid events."

Sunday's meet is the last time Menzione, Jordyn Penny and Sydney Finke will compete at Worthen Arena.

The season is in the home stretch, and as the Cardinals put it all together Saleem notes this year's team continues to stay steady heading into the final few meets on the schedule.

"At the beginning of the year we talked about each meet being a little bit better. If you look, we've been much more consistent this year than in the past. For this young group to take that and build on it is really exciting."

Cardinals Bringing Competitive Fire Into Final Home Meet

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Players Mentioned

Sydney Finke

Arden Hudson

Kaitlyn Menzione

Jordyn Penny