No. 24 Illinois women’s gymnastics suffered a loss on Monday evening to No. 11 Ohio State, 197.100-196.175. This marks the second loss in a row for the Illini, now putting them at 5-3 for the season and 0-2 in the conference.
Unfortunately for the Illini, they fell short in almost every event on Monday. On the vault the Illini scored 48.900, with all-around sophomore Arielle Ward being the highest scorer for Illinois with her score of 9.850. Ohio State earned an overall score of 49.300 on the vault.
On the bars, Illinois saw a tie for first place with all-around freshman Destiny Denning, who scored an impressive 9.900. Illinois was able to pull out a very close win for the bar category overall, winning by only 0.025th of a point, 49.225-49.200.
Graduate all-around Mia Takekawa came out in second on the beam with her score of 9.900. However, the Illini suffered another narrow loss in this event with a score of 49.075-49.225.
Four Illinois athletes scored an overall of 9.825 points on the floor — Ward, junior all-around Kadyn Fitzgibbon, senior all-around Allie Morgan and all-around senior Abby Mueller. Takekawa was not far behind with 9.775 of her own, but Ohio State came out ahead on the floor (49.375-49.075) despite Illinoisʼ success.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
Mueller talked about some of the new talent on the team, stating that the underclassmen on the team are holding a lot of talent and that Illinois’ new recruits will be next up as well.
“I think we’re going to have a great year,” Mueller said. “Right now we have a lot of underclassmen that have a lot of talent that maybe we’re not seeing right now because we’re led by an all-senior team, but they have a lot of talent in the works that you’re going to see soon and in the upcoming years. A great incoming recruiting class as well.”
Mueller also shared how the team is not done improving this season and how they are ready to fix small changes to greatly impact their scores. As for the regular season, Mueller said it’s the right time for the team to grow so they can work on moving their way up in the conference and so that they can eventually score big.
“We still have a lot more to give and the things that we have to do to grow are such small changes, but that’ll impact our score by so much,” Mueller said. “(The) regular season is just a good place for us to grow and learn what we need to do when Big Ten meet day comes around because that’s the day we want to win a championship, so all of these meets are preparing us and learning what we need to do to get that final big score on the right day.”
Illinois women’s gymnastics will compete at Huff Hall on Sunday at 2 p.m. against Rutgers.
