Hello Gym fans! Seniors Ashley White and Kaity Mussio here to give you our very last gym talk…EVER! We are honored to give it to you all since we had our very last competition as a team at the Midwest Independent Conference Championships last weekend! The MIC championships were held in St. Charles, Missouri, with Lindenwood University hosting the meet. Another exciting part about last weekend was going to see the SEC Championships, which were also being held in St. Louis. We were very lucky to get to attend such a great meet and had a blast watching these top programs compete against one another! It was a great experience for our team to witness the LSU Tigers take the SEC title, which gave the us motivation for next year's season!
At MIC's, the Ladies' bar rotation included several solid routines. One highlight was freshman Si-Si Ponder, who hit her beautiful bar routine featuring a sky high Takatchev release. Junior Tavia Smith also hit her bar routine with a stunning Shaposh release. Sophomore Evelyn Harris anchored the bar rotation, hitting her new upgraded bar routine with her Maloney release! Evelyn has been working hard in the gym to master this skill, and we are very proud of her. Evelyn's tenacity this entire season, after missing a good portion of first semester due to illness, has been an inspiration to us all. A true comeback queen!
On beam, senior Ashley White got us off to a beautiful start, as usual, and scored her season high on the event with a 9.70! We are going to miss having Ashley as our starter on beam! She has done such a great job in the role for the last four years, missing only two routines in our lead off position in FOUR years!! Evelyn Harris also received her season best with a very solid routine, scoring 9.775, which placed her 10th overall! Way to go beam queens!
We then continued our battle through floor! We had our best routines performed by sophomore Cami Bea with a 9.75 and junior Navia Jordan with a 9.725! Way to finish strong, ladies!
The Ladies then moved to their last event on the vault, with sophomore Evelyn Harris started the ladies off strong. We kept our momentum going with Senior Ashley White pulled off a clean stick with her yurckenko layout half and came out with a score of 9.725! Then freshmen Sisi Ponder made her new vault this weekend as the anchor! Way to go Si-Si! Good job ladies for finishing off vault this season!
After our last meet together as a team at conference, we found out five of our Ladies will have the opportunity to compete at the USAG Nationals which will be held by Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas! Freshmen Sierra Ponder will compete on the uneven bars! Watch out everyone! Here comes the bar whisperer! Sophomore Cami Bea Austin (space cowboy Cam) and Junior Navia Jordan will compete on the floor exercise floor once again this season! Junior Tavia Smith will compete in the all-around and senior Ashley White will compete on floor and vault!
Though we did not make it to Nationals as a team this season, we are more than excited and proud for this group of competitive individuals to compete and represent Centenary one last time! We will miss competing with the rest of the team dearly, but we know no matter what, we will have each other in the end. We couldn't be prouder of each and every one of you Ladies! No matter what happens, all our training and preparation will be worth it! Cannot wait for you all to shine! We love you guys!
After graduation, Kaity will be attending the University of California-Berkeley and getting her Master's Degree in public health with a concentration in global environmental health. She will miss her Centenary family dearly but is excited for the new experiences and challenges awaiting her in California!
Ashley will be applying to graduate school for social work and will be getting married to Andrew Koepnick this coming July!
We are sad to be closing this chapter soon, but we are more excited to approach a new one! We love our team and will miss the fun memories we made together. Our team and Centenary family made these past four years remarkable and we will cherish them for the rest of our lives!
Soul sisters over and out!
