The women’s gymnastics team will find itself back in an arena which once held the promise of the highest score of the season.

The Huskies (4-5, 2-4 MAC) will travel to Western Michigan to take on the rest of the conference in the season finale. They had the chance to reach their goal of 195 there two weeks ago.

Head coach Sam Morreale knows the 195 goal was in sight, and that the meet it had all the makings of being the strongest of the year for his squad until the final rotation.

“Western by far was our best meet of the year going into last event,” Morreale said. “It wasn’t like it was something, ‘Oh, warm-ups went bad, look out for this.’ It was a total opposite of what we’re used to. I don’t know if the pressure got to us, if the kids knew the 195 was in sight.”

Seniors Marisa Liptak and Natalie Sutter have been through three MAC championships before, and this event may serve as the final meet of their NIU careers.

Liptak knows the Western Michigan meet was a tough loss, but believes that returning to the venue will provide motivation as opposed to stirring up bad feelings.

“I know our mindset is going to be different going in there on beam because that is where we struggled,” Liptak said. “We know how we felt during those routines and we’re going to change it. Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to hold us back, it’s a little frustrating looking back, but I think we’re pumped more than anything. It pushes us that we have to be extra focused, especially at MAC where there is extra chaos.”

The chaos will be provided by the fact that all seven teams will be in attendance, with four teams constantly rotating and others getting longer breaks than usual.

The event also contains an extra amount of pressure, as the MAC has two teams that are nationally ranked, which lends itself well as a proving ground for NIU.

The event will be the second time this season that the freshmen have competed in a quad meet, will help send two seniors off, and will provide a handful of juniors–like Kim Gotlund and Natasha Jufko–a chance to up their scores and push for a regional berth.

Even freshman vault specialist Jaelyn Olsen is pushing for a regional spot.

As a senior, Sutter has motivation from her own standpoint as well as the team’s success.

“I feel like everything wrapped up into one,” Sutter said. “The fact that it’s my last meet, the fact that we’ve been building momentum all season, and the fact that there are goals we haven’t met yet, and I really want to be a part of it…I mean, it’s MAC championships and there’s obviously goals within that, like higher placing and proving we’re one of the top schools in the MAC.

“We want to prove that we’re not the team we were these past two weeks. We kind of have some extra fire going into these. It’s the last chance of the season to go out there and prove what we’ve trained all year to do.”

As the team is closing in on the finale, Morreale knows the benefit of experience is a great thing for his relatively young team going forward, but has confidence and is of the belief that this is not just a developmental meet.

“I think we’re legitimately going to MACs to win MACs,” Morreale said. “If we put a solid meet together we can be anywhere in the top three. There are two cream-of-the-crop scoring meets in our conference, we’re going to have that perfect meet. I feel like we’ve been building and culminating to get to this point all season.”