For a while, a challenge had been staring the No. 6 Michigan women’s gymnastics team in the face, written in giant red lettering on the wall of the Wolverines’ practice facility: ‘How Bad Do We Want It?’
And lying just beneath that in a dark blue font is the team’s season-long aspiration, ‘Super Six’.
For fifteen weeks the team worked its way toward that singular goal, grabbing win after win to earn national recognition and a rank of sixth, but the season was put to rest as the Wolverines were eliminated in the NCAA Preliminaries on Thursday.
Michigan placed fourth out of six in Gainesville, Florida, falling one position short of a bid for the Super Six finals. With a score of 195.700, the squad finished just six-tenths of a point behind third-place Stanford.
But despite the respectable finish, the Wolverines know they have no one to blame but themselves for missing out on an opportunity to vie for a national championship in the Super Six.
“The most disappointing part of the night had to be finishing fourth,” junior Kylee Botterman said. “The second and third-place teams in front of us had to count falls just like us. They opened the door and we could have definitely stepped up and taken advantage of that, but we just didn’t.”
Even after counting an earlier fall on the beam, the team still had a shot to nab a bronze medal entering the final rotation, but two specific events needed to occur. First, Missouri — a notably weak beam team — would need to struggle on its beam routines, which they did.
But the last condition was that Michigan would have to post higher than a 39.325 on the bars to best the Cardinals. However, after the first two athletes — seniors Kelsey Knutson and Maureen Moody — lost their grips on the bar and fell, the night was all but over.
In the end, trying to overcome five falls, two of which figured into the scoring, was just too much for the comeback-hopeful team.
“We’re all obviously very disappointed, and we just didn’t have our best night,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “We started out by counting a fall on beam, then we really pulled ourselves together — fought back — and had a chance to get back in it, and then kind of fell apart on bars at the end. You can’t come to a championship like this and count one fall, let alone two.”
One major factor for the Wolverines was the absence of freshman Katie Zurales, who suffered a dislocated shoulder in regional competition two weeks ago. Her spot in the lineup were filled by freshman Natalie Beilstein on the beam, and senior Jaclyn Kramer on the vault.
Although Beilstein has hardly faltered in her floor exercise and vault this season, taking on the beam was a different beast, and the rookie took an unfortunate tumble.
But Kramer was up to the task on the vault, posting a 9.850 to catapult Michigan to an outstanding 49.375 overall score on that rotation.
“That was the best story of the evening,” Plocki said. “Jackie came into the vault lineup, did a vault that she’d never done in competition before and received a terrific score.”
But as the team watched the scoreboard flash their final totals, three athletes — Knutson, Kramer, and Moody — saw their careers at Michigan come to an end.
“(The seniors) had a great season to end on,” Botterman, who had a team-high 39.425 in the all-around, said. “I wish I could have helped more to end their season on a higher note than this. They’re sad to be done, but we had a great season.”
It was a bittersweet ending to a story that contained four Big Ten titles, three NCAA Championship bids and a 79-14 record.
“The seniors are devastated right now, but they need to hold their heads up high,” Plocki said. “They’ve had great careers at Michigan. We accomplished a lot of things that we wanted to achieve, and we just fell a little short of our goal.”