For most teams, placing fifth out of seven would be disappointing. The women’s gymnastics team, however, looks at its fifth-place finish in the Big Ten Championships as a positive one.

“We were projected to finish sixth or seventh, and we came out fifth, but it wasn’t our best meet,” said head coach Bob Starkell. “We haven’t been in fifth for a while, six has been the magic number at these championships for at least five years. The fact that we beat two tough Big Ten teams has us feeling pretty positive.”

No.7 Michigan won its fourteenth Big Ten title with a score of 196.250, ahead of No.11 Penn State (196.125), No. 22 Minnesota (195.375) and No. 33 Michigan State (193.775). The No.33 Illini finished a fraction of a point behind them with a score of 193.725, and finished ahead of Iowa (193.000) and Ohio State (192.875).

The team struggled on bars with a score of 48.000, placing sixth in the event, but sophomore Cara Pomeroy continued her great season finishing fourth with a 9.850.

“Bars is a difficult event to start on, especially since we hadn’t done any gymnastics for forty-five minutes, and weren’t really warmed up,” Starkell said. “The judges there are going to grade you hard, and they graded us especially tough on bars. It was probably the difference between fourth and fifth place. Coaching staff wise, I thought we did a good job, but the scores didn’t reflect it. This also affected Cara, who to me, had one of the top two or three bar performances.”

The ladies fared much better on beam, posting a 48.625 – the second best score – and were led by Pomeroy, who scored a 9.850 to earn fifth. Senior Ashley Williams and junior Katie Wild also contributed with scores of 9.750 and 9.700, respectively.

“We came off a bye, and were focused to make up for bars and did really well,” Starkell said. “We got some key performances from Katie Wild and Pomeroy, they had solid routines which helped our team score.”

The team could not find the magic on the next event, floor, and again finished sixth with a score of 48.425. The team was led by Wild’s 9.725. Senior Sara Dumich and junior Danye Botterman had identical scores of 9.700.

“We’ve been struggling generally on floor,” Starkell said. “It’s probably not our strongest event, and we’ve trying to clean up our performances, but they did an okay job.”

However, they finished off strong on vault, posting the third highest team score of 48.675, which was also their highest score on any event. Botterman and senior Lauren Newcomb led the team with scores of 9.800, while freshman Michelle McGrady also contributed with a 9.750.

“We had a really good day in vault,” Starkell said. “It was probably one of our better vault days, and performance-wise we really excelled.”

The team’s record changed to 17-5 on the season.

“We really had a good meet,” Newcomb said. “Between us and Michigan State, it was a 0.5 difference, which is one non-stuck landing. We had a lot of energy, we went in and did our job, and we weren’t disappointed at all with our performance.”