Illinois women’s gymnastics heads to St. Louis to compete against No. 6 Florida, No. 14 Missouri and Lindenwood. Both Florida and Missouri are having impressive seasons with records of 6-1 and 6-2 respectively, whereas Illinois currently has a 6-4 record. Lindenwood sits at 8-2 in its final season before the discontinuation of its gymnastics program.
In good news for Illinois, previously No. 17, graduate Mia Takekawa is now No. 8 on the beam after her impressive score of 9.950 against No. 11 Michigan State last week. Takekawa talked about the benefits of the team competing not only in Missouri on Friday but also at home on Sunday. She shared that despite the physical challenges this weekend will present, it is a great chance for Illinois to boost its National Qualifying Scores, which will help it as it enters the halfway point of the season.
“It’s a heavy weekend, it takes a toll on our bodies,” Takekawa said. “It’s also a great opportunity for us to get two great scores — one away and one home.”
NQS only considers the six highest scores of a team, so this is a great chance for the Illini to eliminate any of the lower scores they have posted this season.
Takekawa also talked more about the team’s potential, saying that after their close loss to Michigan State, the team was able to talk about the possibility of achieving high scores.
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“Everybody definitely has the potential to score really big and what that would mean for our team if we can put it all together one day,” Takekawa said. “We would be at a mid-197, which is incredible.”
Takekawa and graduate Mia Townes have hit 9.950 on bars and floor respectively. Freshman Destiny Denning and senior Kaitlyn Ewald have reached 9.900 on bars while junior Ruthuja Nataraj scored 9.875 on vault.
Head coach Nadalie Walsh spoke about the team’s dedication to the vault event this week after knowing it was not their best against Michigan State. Walsh also said assistant coach Ross Thompson was helping the team out with their improvement this week so they don’t have one event hold them back.
“Vault was not the best and this week they have done a tremendous job,” Walsh said. “Really elevating the expectation, and I think the athletes are more confident and more ready.”
Illinois women’s gymnastics will be competing at the 2024 GymQuarters Invitational in St. Louis at 6 p.m. where they will face No. 6 Florida, No. 14 Missouri and Lindenwood.
