Illinois men’s gymnastics is gearing up to head to Greenville, Illinois, this weekend for its next meet. This upcoming meet for the Illini follows their successful run at the Windy City Invitational earlier this month, where they scored a total of 404.450 points and finished second place overall.
Illinois competed against four other teams and was only behind No. 3 Michigan. The team only lost by 0.7 points to the reigning Big Ten champions. With such a narrow margin of defeat, the Illini are confident that the results will be different when the Wolverines come to Champaign on Feb. 3. Fifth-year all-around Michael Fletcher believes that the Illini are just a few simple mistakes away from reaching the mountaintop.
“Yes. 100%,” Fletcher said. “We just have to move on and focus on fixing the mistakes for next time, but I definitely do think that we have a very strong chance of beating them when they come home in a few weeks.”
The Illini’s 404.450-point performance was enough to beat Simpson (361.250), Northern Illinois (295.400) and Washington (362.750). It was the first time Illinois ever competed against Simpson and Washington while also marking its fifth straight victory over Northern Illinois.
Looking ahead to this weekend, Fletcher mentioned how the Illini have done a lot of hard training during preseason, which now allows them to focus on fixing any mistakes that come up before their meet this weekend as confidently as possible.
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“Most of the preparation work and the hard training … has been done during preseason,” Fletcher said. “We’re working on refining and being as confident as possible leading up to the meat we just want to be as confident in the gym as we possibly can be just trying to put the emphasis on the little details that we need to fix so we can go into the weekend really confident.”
The Illini competed twice against Greenville during the 2023 season and won on both occasions. Those two meetings were the first between the two programs, meaning Illinois could leave this weekend with a commanding 3-0 all-time record against Greenville. Through those two meetings, Illinois averaged 397.725 points and won by an average of 29.425.
Fletcher talked about the Illini’s overall positivity and mentioned that they do a good job focusing on themselves and not worrying so much about the other teams during the meets. Fletcher also noted the team’s ability to hype themselves up, especially at away meets, and how keeping up that energy is one of the keys to being successful.
“This team that we have right now does a really good job at keeping in our own space rather than focusing on the rest of the competition and keeping the hype up at an away meet,” Fletcher said. “We do a really good job at keeping up the energy at away meets and that’s one of the most important keys to having a successful meet and a lot of that comes from positive energy.”
Illinois men’s gymnastics will be competing at Greenville on Saturday at 2 p.m.
