The women’s gymnastics team will face its toughest test yet as the Kent State Golden Flashes come into DeKalb on a four-meet winning streak.

The Flashes (4-2, 2-0 MAC) have scored under a 194 only once this season, and in their last meet eclipsed the 196 mark, defeating a nationally ranked Central Michigan team.

The Huskies (3-3, 1-2 MAC) have been building momentum as well, scoring more than 194 the last two meets, and have not been home since early February.

Head coach Sam Morreale believes that while he just wants to see a good performance, a win may be something more for this meet.

“We’re excited to get back home, we’re very comfortable here,” Morreale said. “It’d be hard to put a quantity on how big [a win] would be…but I think again because it’s Kent, they are perennially a good team, I think that win would mean more irregardless of the score.”

Junior Kim Gotlund knows that being at home is an advantage and puts the team in its comfort zone. She believes parlaying that with the last few meets will hopefully bring success.

“It really helps, we’ve been on the road for two weeks, I think we’re excited to be back here,” Gotlund said. “Last meets were really big confidence builders. It’s a big meet against Kent. We’ve been undefeated at home so I think we really want that win and to just do as well as we can.”

With the accomplishment of the last meet, hitting 24-24 routines, the Huskies achieved several of the goals Morrelae has laid out before them. The team reached their nine sticks as a goal, and also reached the 24-24. Moving forward, the stick total will be increased, and the team score goal will rise to about the 195 range.

Morreale believes a good way to not only help reach those goals but to advance toward better competition will be through the incremental increases in difficulty and skill to individuals’ routines.

As the process is under way and was in the swing of things last meet, with sophomore Amanda Stepp taking on a harder vault, the dividends are already showing.

“We were underachieving on a couple of events,” Morreale said. “Moving forward, we’re continuing to add things. In the grand scheme of competition, it puts us at more of an even playing field of the team we’re competing against. We’re try to upgrade our already good routines to squeeze a little more out of them.”