'M' to host Classic

After finishing with its highest team score of the season last weekend, the Michigan women's gymnastics team looks ahead to the upcoming State of Michigan Classic this Saturday with a great deal of confidence and excitement.

"With every meet we compete in, our confidence grows and we get more excited," Michigan's Sarah Cain said.

The sixth-ranked Wolverines will host Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Central Michigan and Michigan State in the 4 p.m. competition at Cliff Keen Arena. Michigan has winning records against all of the schools, except Michigan State, who leads the Wolverines, 28-18.

But the Spartans have been on somewhat of a losing streak this season, losing three of their last four meets. Michigan State's highest score this season is 190.925 - a far cry from the consistently higher scores realized by the Wolverines throughout their past four meets. The reason for the Spartans' low scores this season is partly due to injuries. "Michigan State is a really good team, despite all of their injuries," Cain said. "Their having a lot of injuries is just an advantage to us this time."

Despite Michigan State's injuries and the fact that Michigan has performed consistently better in competition in comparison with the other schools participating in the meet this weekend, the Wolverines are not using the apparent advantages to pump themselves up for the meet.

The Wolverines are focusing more on their own performances and making themselves better rather than relying on any mistakes by other teams.

"We have been working on bringing what we do in practice into the meets, like cleaning up skills," Cain said. "If we just keep performing like we have been in practice and also in the meets, we should be fine."

Michigan has been performing consistently better with every meet this season, and the ultimate goal for the Wolverines is to have no falls. But in previous meets, the falls that they have had to count helped them to focus in other areas and to perform better.

Last weekend, Michigan had a couple of falls on the balance beam, but Cain said this encouraged them to get even more excited for the floor exercise, which is perhaps the reason why the Wolverines ended up scoring their season high of 49.325 on the event.

"Floor exercise is our favorite event because it follows beam, and we can usually step up our performance," Cain said. "It is also the most fun."

The Wolverines will be at an obvious advantage this weekend because of their home crowd, but they will also have the advantage of competing in Olympic order - vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise.

Michigan usually starts off strong on the vault, which gives an initial boost of confidence, and it gets to finish with its favorite event.

"We have very strong vaults, so hopefully we will get off to a good start," Cain said. "And then we are just going to try to hit 24 for 24 routines."

02-04-99