The No. 6 Michigan women’s gymnastics team did just enough to survive at the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships on Saturday, but securing a second-place finish came at a steep price.

Both of the top two scores for the meet qualified for the NCAA finals. The Wolverines finished with a score of 195.800 — well behind No. 6 Stanford’s mark of 196.775.

Just one year removed from being bumped out of a spot in the NCAA Championships by the Cardinals, Michigan got a chance at revenge, but came up short.

At the NCAA Regional Finals on April 4, 2009, the team's third-place finish behind Stanford and then-top-ranked Arkansas disallowed them from advancing to the championship — marking the program’s first absence at the nation's top stage in 17 years.

But as the Wolverines (10-1 Big Ten, 19-3 overall) headed to Morgantown, W. Va. last weekend for their regional six-team matchup, they expected a rosier outcome.

The balance beam once again proved to be the team’s bane.

Heading into the final rotation on the beam, Michigan was neck-and-neck with Stanford. In runaway fashion the two teams had created an almost insurmountable lead over the rest of the field.

But the Wolverines posted a meet-low 47.975 on the beam, caused by three separate falls, and the event that catapulted the team among the best in the nation almost left them empty-handed.

“It’s the kiss of death when we go into the last event thinking that we literally just have to stay on the beam,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “I think we’re actually better under pressure situations like the Big Ten Championships when we had to stick to beat Penn State. I think that when all you have to do is stay on, that’s the hardest thing to do.”

With such a large lead before hitting the beam, only a catastrophic finish would have allowed another team back into the competition, and that is exactly what happened, as Southern Utah inched to less than half a point behind Michigan.

Unfortunate news came for the Wolverines when freshman Katie Zurales, one of the team’s top performers during the second half of the season, dislocated her shoulder while finishing up her beam routine.

“She had a pretty good beam routine going,” Plocki said, explaining the injury. “You throw your arms in the air to initiate the twist, and when she threw her arm back, her shoulder dislocated, so she kind of quit in the middle of the skill and ended up landing on her side. So the injury didn’t happen on the fall, it was on her take-off from the beam.”

After watching Zurales’s injury, two of the last three performers also tumbled from the beam.

“It’s kind of hard to recollect yourselves when a teammate goes down, so that was unfortunate for us,” junior Kylee Botterman said. “We didn’t recover how we should have.”

According to Plocki, the severity of the injury is still unknown, but the team is searching to fill her spot in the beam and vault lineups for safety’s sake.

Despite the drama surrounding the beam, the meet did feature some outstanding performances from most of the squad.

Senior captain Jordan Sexton stole the show by putting up a career-high 9.950 score on the uneven bars, which had been the weakest rotation for the Wolverines entering the regional matchup.

Just as the team has come to expect, Botterman stepped up under pressure and won the all-around crown with a 39.550 score, also sharing the floor exercise title with freshman Natalie Beilstein.

“It was exciting that I did well, but I really couldn’t enjoy it,” Botterman said. “We didn’t know at the end if we made it or not, no one had given us the thumbs up yet. When I was going up to get my awards I wasn’t really excited because I didn’t know what the outcome was.”

When the team finally did hear its name announced as an NCAA Finals qualifier, the entire Michigan troupe let out a sigh of relief.

As the Wolverines look for their ninth national championship in the season finale in Gainesville, Fla. in two weeks, they clearly have some work to do.

But as the team has battled back all season long, this will be just another test of Michigan’s elite status as a force in gymnastics.

“We just need to prepare ourselves mentally,” Botterman said. “I think we’re going to keep our heads up and see what happens with Katie. We have backups and will get them ready to go, and if we can stay positive then we’ll get a positive outcome at nationals.”