McLean County Times

NORMAL, Ill. – The Illinois State gymnastics team achieved their third-best team score of the year at CEFCU Arena on Friday night, defeating Greenville with a score of 195.275-189.325.

Coach Conkling expressed satisfaction with the team's performance, stating, "I'm very happy with our score tonight, being our third highest of the year. We started on vault and bars and were really strong, but then we had a hiccup on balance beam. However, they pulled things together, had each other's backs, went to floor, and had a great rotation. Overall, I'm very proud of the team and their performance today and they know they have more in them. So, we are going to push to get back to that 196 mark moving forward."

The Redbirds narrowly missed achieving their fourth consecutive event score over 49 points as they began with a 48.925 on vault and improved with a 48.975 on bars. Despite challenges during the beam rotation resulting in a 48.275 score due to counting a fall, ISU rebounded strongly in the final floor exercise with a team score of 49.100.

Senior Sara Wabi secured first place in the all-around competition with a score of 38.500. Alana Laster led the vault event scoring 9.875 followed by Mya Robinson and Jaye Mack who scored 9.800 and 9.775 respectively.

Jada Beswick and Wabi tied for first place on bars each scoring 9.850 while Reese Grolla came third scoring 9.800.

On beam, Jaly Jones was ISU's top performer finishing second overall at 9.825; Mack and Grolla both scored 9.800 tying for third place.

In the floor exercise event Robinson, Laster and Mack shared top honors each scoring an identical 9.850 leading ISU’s finishers who claimed top four spots.

Looking ahead the Redbirds will compete against Big Ten Conference teams Illinois (host) along with Washington next Friday February 22nd at Champaign starting from one o'clock pm local time.

For updates follow Illinois State Gymnastics via GoRedbirds.com Instagram (@redbirdgymnastics) X (@redbirdwgym) or Facebook pages where additional resources such as tickets multimedia content merchandise photos etc., can also be accessed through GoRedbirds.com or official mobile application offered by university athletic department called 'Illinois State Redbirds App'.