COLUMBUS — Spurred on by the roaring Michigan contingent seated above the floor of St. John Arena, the No. 9 Michigan women’s gymnastics team battled a field of seven at the Big Ten Championships and emerged victorious for the fourth consecutive year.

In a year of inconsistency for Michigan athletics, the squad has been a model of stability, bringing home the school’s first Big Ten crown of the year.

The Wolverines (10-1 Big Ten, 19-3 overall) posted a season-high score of 196.900 on Saturday, taking first place and avenging an earlier loss to No. 17 Penn State on March 17, who accepted the silver medal with 196.525.

Entering the final rotation leading by less than three-tenths of a point, all eyes fell on the Michigan team taking its spot at the beam — a troublesome event for the Wolverines early this season — alongside the Nittany Lions at the uneven bars.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “When you get down to it being that close in a championship and competing side-by-side like that, I was just really proud that when the pressure was on, we were able to rise to the occasion like we did.”

And the Wolverines impressed on the beam, with four of the five marks hitting at 9.900, including a stick by senior captain Kelsey Knutson to effectively seal the victory.

Leading off for the Wolverines, senior Sarah Curtis knew that if the team could lay down the score that they were capable of making, it wouldn’t matter how well Penn State (8-3, 17-9) did on the bars.

“I was actually pretty nervous, having to start off the last rotation and knowing it was beam,” Curtis said. “But I thought, ‘This is what they need me for, I have to start this off right,’ and thankfully that worked out well.”

Curtis also hit a 9.900 routine on beam, setting her all-around score at 39.525, a season-high that was enough for second place out of 19 performers. At the end of the event, she trailed Nittany Lion senior Brandi Personett by .025 of a point.

Curtis’s usual competitor for the Wolverines’ top spot, junior Kylee Botterman, suffered an uncharacteristic fall on the bars, but her teammates picked up their pace to adjust.

Freshman Natalie Beilstein — who was named to the Big Ten Second Team, and was a finalist for Big Ten Freshman of the Year this weekend — continued her dominant season in the championship.

“Unbelievable,” Plocki said, describing the freshman’s performance. “Natalie has been outstanding, and I’m a little disappointed that she wasn’t voted freshman of the year, but she is going home with some hardware regardless.”

Beilstein posted a pair of 9.900 scores on the floor routine and the vault, and took home top laurels on the vault, taking first out of 42 athletes.

“Coming out on the floor I wanted to go big, I wanted to go hard, and that’s what I did,” Beilstein said. “On vault I knew to get that good score you had to stick it, and that’s what I went out there and did.”

Now secured among the nation’s best programs, everything will come down to execution as the team gears up for the NCAA Regional finals in two weeks.

“We don’t really have that much to work on,” Curtis said. “We can always work on the little tiny things that need to be fixed, but after this meet and going to regionals we just want to carry on what we’ve been doing all year and make it to nationals.”