The NIU gymnastics team will have the home field advantage when the State of Illinois Championships roll into town Saturday.

They are hosting Illinois State, UIC, and the University of Illinois.

The Huskies (1-9 overall, 1-5 MAC) are coming off their second consecutive score of at least 193, and continue to show improvements.

Due to their recent improvements, head coach Mark Sontag is expecting good things from his team this weekend in the state meet.

“The last couple of weeks we have been making a lot of improvements and you can see that based off of our scores,” Sontag said. “We have been fixing our routines and cutting back on the little mistakes and our scores have gone up because of that. I am expecting that trend to continue this weekend.”

The recent improvements in their scores and routines have also raised the confidence of the team.

“The girls feel very confident going into the meet this weekend,” Sontag said. “That confidence has come from the last couple of meets. They have seen their scores and now they believe in themselves and know that they have the talent to be successful.”

The Huskies have the same mind set going into the state meet as they do with any other meet.

“Our goal, as it is, in any other meet is to go 24-for-24,” Sontag said. “We want to have six hits on every event and get the best score possible in each event with no misses. That is our goal for every meet but we are going into this meet and we are looking to win the whole thing. We believe that we can do that.”