Jan. 8, 2009

Get behind the scenes of Illinois Gymnastics with Illini Ink - the weekly women's gymnastics journal. In this week's edition, sophomore Lashlee Morris talks about getting ready of the season's first meet, and "second Christmas".

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Happy New Year Illini Fans!

It's that exciting time of year again, meet season! Our first meet of the year will be at Michigan State this Friday the 9th. It will be aired on the Big Ten Network January 16th at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT so try to catch us if you can! ☺ All the girls have been looking really good in practice the past few weeks. Once everyone gets back from Christmas break there seems to be a new edge/fire that helps everyone work extra hard and really prepare for meet season. The team has been setting daily goals such as sticking, being tight, or cheering loud which has induced a competitive atmosphere to help prepare for our up and coming meets.

The team got to celebrate our "2nd Christmas" as I like to call it, at Bob and Lynette's. They cooked a phenomenal meal and we even got to decorate Christmas cookies! So much fun! Everyone exchanged Secret Santa gifts. Suki got me for the second year in a row and gave me the cutest purse. Everyone really seemed to enjoy giving their gifts.

Wednesday the team will get to do school visits which I'm really excited about. The team gets in groups of about 4 or 5 and goes to different schools to play and visit with the kids once they get out of school. It's a lot of fun to see how excited they get to interact with the team.

Thanks for reading!

GO ILLINI!

Lashlee