A common March Madness theme in basketball is the concept of "survive and advance."
The Ball State gymnastics team didn't necessarily want to adopt that motif, but the Cardinals did anyway, slogging through their regular-season finale while keeping their minds on next week's conference championships.
"I didn't think this meet would be as hard for them as it was," coach Nadalie Walsh said. "It was almost like a little piece of the mental puzzle wasn't there."
Western Michigan (7-7, 4-2 Mid-American Conference) defeated Ball State (5-9, 3-3) 194.025-192.575 in Muncie on Friday night. With the win, the Broncos finished third while Ball State took fourth in the seven-team conference.
The majority of the difference came on the balance beam. Ball State suffered two falls, while Western Michigan put up its best team event score of the night. The Broncos won the beam by more than a point, 48.95-47.875.
"Some of the things that happened were really uncharacteristic, so I'm not going to worry about them," Walsh said.
Along with the defeat, Ball State may have lost one of its uneven bars specialists for next week's conference championships. Junior MaryAnn Oehlerking fell hard and injured her knee during her bars dismount.
Walsh said the severity of the injury and Oehlerking's status for the championships will be known early next week.
It wasn't all negative for the Cardinals. Junior Brittney Emmons paced the team with three first-place finishes, including the all-around title with a 39.025. She also set a career high on the beam with a 9.775.
Freshman Aftyn Siemer set two career marks in the meet. Her career-high 9.8 on the floor exercise tied for first with Emmons and she added a 9.825 to lead the Cardinals on the beam.
"Not only am I so proud of her, I'm impressed with her," Walsh said of the freshman, "and then on the flip side, I really expected her, when I recruited her, to be that good."
Sophomore Caroline O'Brien and freshman Kelsey Turnquist led the way for the Broncos, picking up event victories on the bars and beam, respectively.
Ball State has one week to prepare for the MAC championships, and Walsh said the gymnasts want to make up for the errors in Friday's meet during practice in order to be prepared.
"Every one of the girls that had a mistake [Friday] wants to get in the gym and do it 10 times over," she said. "That's the only way that they're going to feel better about it."
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