Hey ILLINI Fans!

As a freshman, I can't believe how fast my first year as a Fighting Illini is going by! This year has been filled with much laughter, memories and of course hard work! But, we aren't done yet!

March 12th was our Big Five competition. We competed against Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Maryland. It was great to see friends from the other teams that we have not seen in a while and it also made the meet more fun! We started off our day with our pre-meet rituals of dancing, singing and taking pictures. The bus rides to the meets are always the best because everyone has such high energy. As the meet began, we started on beam and we had lots of energy. We cheered extra loud because we had to stay in the corral which meant that we couldn't be up close to the event like we could do during the regular season. Next, we had a bye which we went into the locker room and played the game "Heads Up" while we waited to come back out. Soon our bye was over and we were ready to rock floor! Everyone did a great job and fought through till the very end of the meet. After the meet was over we ended up getting a final score of 195.95 which placed us in the morning session for Big Tens in Nebraska.

We left on Thursday for Nebraska and had a practice day on Friday. Also, on Friday we had a banquet which we honored all of the seniors and gave out Big Ten awards. Sunny and Giana both were awarded First Team Big Ten honors and MJ won the Sportsmanship award. Every team also sang their fight song at the end of the banquet which was super fun. The next day we competed at 11 and had fun cheering on each teammate as they competed their hearts out. We then got lunch with our parents and the rest of the team and came back to the arena to see how the second session played out. It was a great experience watching all the other Big Ten teams compete against each other.  After that, we had a long travel day home, but we were ready to get back into the gym the following day.

We have only five practices left till Regionals where we will be going to Salt Lake City, Utah.  During these practices we are really trying to fix the little things such as landings and cast handstands. Our fire is fueled and we will push hard to prepare for regionals. We have a good team this year and if we all hit like we do in practice, great things will come out of this meet!

As always, thank you to our Illini gym fans for their love and support for our program! We could not do this without you guys!

ILL-

Rachael Donovan