A day before the official beginning of the spring semester, women’s gymnastics started its season with a win for the first time since the 2009 season.

The Huskies (1-0) took on the Redbirds of Illinois State (1-1) in a closely-contested meet the entire way through.

The Huskies trailed heading into the last event of the meet, which featured ISU on beam and NIU on floor.

“Honestly at home I feel great finishing on floor,” said NIU coach Sam Morreale. “We have a really good floor team….”

By virtue of having four Redbirds drop off the beam at one point during their routines, NIU was able to pull ahead and do just that winning the meet 192.175-192.050, behind a 48.250 floor score.

“I thought we started off a little bit rough on bars,” said ISU coach Bob Conkling. “I thought we came back a little bit on vault. We were okay on floor and beam was not so hot. You just can count falls like that and still win meets.”

Aside from the final rotation that sealed the victory for the Huskies, another key moment came in the rotation of having NIU on beam, where, after a solid routine by sophomore Amanda Stepp, NIU counted two falls from seniors Natalie Sutter and Marisa Liptak.

Their teammates would pick them up, however, as junior Natasha Jufko and sophomores Kim Gotlund and Megan Melendez all followed up the two falls with hits, including a meet best 9.825 by Jufko.

Morreale believed that moment showed the depth and balance of his lineup and also why orders are important.

“That’s why they’re later in the order like that,” Morreale said. “You try to stack them so if you do have a miss, you got another kid that can hit. It feels great but it’s almost expected to a point. How they’re training, what they’re doing each and every day, I’m almost more surprised when they fall.”

While NIU secured the victory in the end, the individual high scores and honors almost all went to ISU, with its gymnasts securing high scores in all events except beam where Jufko tied for first with the score of 9.825.

Morreale believes this was a great starting point for his team for multiple reasons.

“We had a lot of mistakes or mishaps that don’t happen in practice but a lot of that is first week jitters type thing,” Morreale said. “I thought we were competing really well and then not getting scores that matched that, not to be complaining about scores the first week. I wasn’t frustrated with how we were doing because we were hitting and moving along.”