People use music to help them in a task they may be working on. Some study while listening to classical or easy going music, others use high intensity music for exercising.

The women of the NIU gymnastics team pair their music with their routines, specifically the competitors on the floor exercise.

Gymnasts on the NIU team have one routine that they first must get music for; once the music is assembled, they must have choreography. After those two tasks have been finished, the product must be practiced.

Those gymnasts will perform that same routine, using that same choreography and that same music, for the next two seasons for every single meet of each season.

Senior Marisa Liptak has been through her first routine and is in the second season of her second choice, and she believes that as she has changed as a gymnast so has her routine.

“When I came into college I was still trying to figure out who I was and how I best perform,” Liptak said. “I had this really cool routine, but going into my junior year I realized I wanted something a lot more upbeat and fun. I just like to get the crowd involved, and I really like to smile and be bubbly so it definitely changed.”

Head coach Sam Morreale does not oversee or take on a lot of the music and choreography aspects of his team, as assistant coach Dawnita Teague handles those responsibilities. All music choices and other routines when ready are run through Morreale and are tweaked accordingly.

Teague works with each individual athlete on finding the right music, cutting and mixing it the right way, and then ultimately laying down the choreography to the music.

“We kind of just like to go with their likes and what I like to make a nice routine for choreography,” Teague said. “I don’t like to override the kids, I want them to have something that they really like. I would say the best routines are joint efforts.

“We have a lot more access to all different kinds of music now. So that really helps, with the search engines that are out there now. That opens up the potential of places you can look and find interesting creative music.”

Teague gets all the music and makes all the short compilations herself. The music each gymnast uses cannot contain any spoken words or singing.

Liptak believes that the music has a huge role in how the gymnasts perform, impacting not only the performance but their passion and attitude.

“It makes a huge difference,” Liptak said. “I can even see it from when I competed my freshman year to when I perform now. I literally get out there and I have a blast. You can just see the difference when people really love their music and they feel it, you can just tell in everything their doing.”

Sophomore Kelly Nortz, in her second season of her first routine, believes the music choice allows for easier creativity with the routine itself.

No matter the musical genre, the seemingly small amount of sound takes a lot of time to be created and plays a huge role in the performance and the mindset of the athlete.

“I made sure that I found one that I really liked before I made my final decision,” Nortz said. “Actually, Nita found it. She just came across this one and we both knew it was the perfect fit for me. The music fits my personality it made it easier to make up the choreography.”