The Ohio State women’s gymnastics team snagged another win with an overall score of 195.8 after their home quad-meet against No. 11 Michigan, Washington and Kent State on Saturday evening.
The team started strong in their first rotation event on vault, scoring a total of 49.12. Junior Alexis Mattern received the highest score and career best of 9.9, tying for first on vault with Michigan’s Olivia Karas.
“Person after person, and being the sixth person up on vault, it’s, it’s kind of tough,” Mattern said. “So you have to wait and watch your teammates, and you just wait in the wings until it’s your turn. And for me to do the vault that I’ve been training all week, right in the moment, when it really counted, was just really great to start that off.”
The Buckeyes gained the lead after the first rotation and continued with momentum to the second event on uneven bars. Sophomore Kaitlyn Hofland placed second overall with a score of 9.85.
After the third rotation on beam, OSU still held the lead before entering their fourth and final event on floor.
“As much as we try not to focus too much on the scores, we could see that we were still in the lead going into the last event,” Hofland said. “Floor is a strong event for us. It’s a fun event. It’s an awesome event and we knew we all could do it.
With the team placing first in their Saturday meet and Mattern finishing third in the all-around with a 39.125, Ohio State received their first conference win against Michigan.
“To beat them at home when all the odds were really stacked against us just means so much more, especially because we worked so hard,” said Mattern.
After riding a wave from their second victory, the team said it won’t take the win for granted. A few minor performance issues were seen during the meet, such as two girls receiving a one-tenth point deduction for stepping out of bounds on their floor routines.
Although coach Carey Fagan took these performances as something to improve upon in preparation for their next meet on Jan. 28 against Iowa, she holds a strong positive outlook for the coming meet and the season as a whole.
“Starting off in the conference 1-0 is going to be huge for my team, and beating — Michigan is a great team,” said Fagan. “They’re historically strongest in the conference, so I think the confidence that my team will get knowing that they compete with the best will really set us up for the rest of the season.”
