The fans at Crisler Arena occasionally hold up a piece of paper with “10” written on it for performances they deem perfect. The actual judges, though, are considerably harder to impress. Before Sunday, no gymnast nationwide had received a score of 10.0 the entire season.

On Sunday, senior Kylee Botterman became the first to attain that perfection.

In the team’s first event of the day, the vault, Botterman was the last scoring competitor. With four very high scores already in the books, it was up to Botterman to put the cherry on top.

And what a cherry it was. Her vault, a yurchenko full — which consists of a round off, back handspring, back flip — earned her the perfect score and gave the team a score of 49.500 for the event. It was the highest team score for any event in the meet and gave Michigan a lead it wouldn’t relinquish until the last event.

Botterman said she can usually tell when she is going to stick a vault before she hits the mat, and she had that feeling Sunday.

“I’ve stuck a couple (vaults) this year already and didn’t get a 10.0 on them, and this one felt a little bit better than those,” Botterman said. “I don’t know what to say. I nailed it, and it was fun and I got chills. My teammates were all running towards me, so it was a cool experience.”

But afterwards, Botterman was unsure whether the judges would reward her with a perfect score.

Michigan coach Bev Plocki was more certain.

“I don’t know what they could have done other than giving her a 10.0,” Plocki said. “She just really set her vault up in the air and put it right down and nailed it cold ... It was beautiful.”

Michigan has had one other perfect score since 2004, which came last year at Illinois. Again, it was Botterman on the vault.

Botterman is far from a one-dimensional gymnast, though. On Sunday, she medaled in every event and recorded Michigan’s highest score in three out of the four events. On bars, her score was topped only by senior Trish Wilson, who tied a career-best mark with a score of 9.925, good enough for a share of the event title.

In just this season alone, Botterman already owns 16 individual titles.

Then there’s this statistic: In every meet she has competed in this season, Botterman has taken home the all-around crown.

Talk about perfection.