The beam event came back to bite the Huskies gymnastics team on Friday at the UIC Triangular. One bad event put the team in second place with a 193.000, losing to UIC’s 193.725 and defeating Seattle Pacific (189.275).

“To have a set-back like we did on beam and come back and score 193 – I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before,” said NIU head coach Mark Sontag. “Overall, we’re not happy, but the team really showed heart tonight. We rallied. We were down but we said ‘we’ve got two events and we’re going to hold our head high, go for broke and see what we can do,’ and we ended up with a good road score.”

Rally the team did, as it outscored UIC on the vault and the bars, but a 1.200 difference on the beam cost NIU the match.

The Huskies 48.725 on the floor fell just short of UIC’s 48.775 but was the highest floor score for them all season. They were led by senior Leah Johnson and senior Jennifer Naughton, who each posted a 6.825 to tie for first in the event.

Johnson and Holly Reichard each posted a 9.8 to lead NIU on the vault. Reichard, the reigning MAC co-gymnast of the week, also won the all-around for the fourth consecutive meet with a 9.8 on the vault, 9.750 on the floor and a 9.675 on the beam.

“The gymnasts with the most experience dug deep tonight, and I credit our upperclassmen for leading the way on those last two events,” Sontag said. “We had a miss leading off on beam, and we got scared that the next person was going to fall off and that’s exactly what happened.

This is what we’ve been talking about – we see our potential with what we did on the last two events, but potential is nothing without results.”