At the end of the third rotation, the No. 14 Illinois women’s gymnastics team was seated in last place and things weren’t looking toward a happy ending.

Starting the Big Ten Championships on the beam, senior Allison Buckley experienced her first fall on the event this year. Buckley is known as a consistent competitor, and her fall greatly affected the Illini.

However, the Orange and Blue finished strong on the last three events and ended the meet taking third with a score of 196.075. No. 9 Michigan took first in the competition with a 196.6 followed by No. 10 Penn State (196.375).

“Well, starting off we struggled a little bit on beam and floor. I don’t think that we had the momentum we needed,” Illinois senior Melissa Fernandez said. “The end of the floor lineup really picked it up for us and we carried the momentum that was started over to vault and had some amazing performances. We built up our momentum on the vault and carried that to the bars where we stuck all six of our dismounts.”

After picking up the momentum from the first event, the Illini had some outstanding personal performances. Freshman Amber See tied for first on the vault with a score of 9.9 for her first Big Ten title. She also tied for fourth on the floor exercise with a score of 9.9.

“Amber has been this little firecracker from the start. She is so talented and is starting off successful her freshman year and builds on every meet,” interim head coach Kim Landrus said. “That was the best vault that I have ever seen Amber do. It got everyone pumped up and contributed to the overall momentum.”

Fernandez also took second in the all-around competition and on the bars with a season-best score of 9.9. Junior Kelsey Joannides turned in scores of 9.8 or higher on all three of her events and tied for second on the beam with a 9.85. Although Buckley started the meet with a fall on beam, she put that behind her and delivered three solid routines on the other events tying See for fourth on the floor exercise.

“I was upset and frustrated with myself at first because it was my first fall on beam this season, but we had a bye after that, which was nice. So I was able to go back to the locker room and let my frustrations out. I regrouped and went out there to perform on floor with the beam routine behind me,” Buckley said.

Going into the championship competition, Illinois was the No. 5 seed. Ohio State and Iowa were ranked above Illinois, and the Illini placed higher than both teams.

“The Big Ten Conference is extremely competitive. We went in and did our jobs and that landed us on top of the podium,” Landrus said.

Last season, the Illini took third at the regional competition in Kentucky. This year, the team earned the No. 3 seed in Saturday’s Tuscaloosa Regional. The Illini are looking to earn a bid to the NCAA Championships this year.

“I think at this point what we need to focus on is having fun and doing our gymnastics because that is all we can do,” See said. “We can’t control the scores we receive, we can only control our gymnastics.”