The Ball State University gymnastics team will compete for the final time before the Mid-American Conference Championship tonight against the University of Denver in Irving Gym.
Ball State started the season 0-8 but after picking up its first victory two weeks ago and scoring more than 190 points in each of the last two meets, the confidence is soaring for the team, coach Nadalie Walsh said.
"Their confidence is much higher, and they are just much cleaner," Walsh said. "I think they just trust each other more than they did earlier."
The Cardinals have worked all season to have an average team score that would qualify them for the NCAA Regionals. However, Walsh said the outlook for qualifying is bleak.
"We are pretty much out of it," she said. "We just don't have enough of those high scores to qualify for Regionals."
Even though the Cardinals are likely not to qualify for Regionals, Walsh said, the team is still focused, as always, to keep improving.
For the five senior Cardinals on this team, tonight's meet will be the final time they compete in front of a home crowd. The seniors have been instrumental in what the team has accomplished this season, Walsh said.
"This senior class has been super valuable because everything they compete in they do well," Walsh, this year's class's third coach in their four years, said. "They have also been huge because they respected me when I came in and partnered with my vision this season."
In most sports the focus on Senior Night is to win for the seniors and while Walsh said the team would like for that to happen, it shouldn't be the team's focus.
"I think we need to just take it one event at a time and do better than we have before," she said. "Denver is ranked [13th] so going into the meet wanting to beat Denver isn't the right focus. We should just want do the best we ever have."
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