Carey Fagan Meet Quotations

I was really pleased with the team's performance against Illinois last weekend. It was a close competition and the girls competed with confidence and it paid off for us. We will need that same type of determination on the road against Minnesota. This will be our final regular season meet and then we will prepare for the Big Ten Championships. At Minnesota we want to clean up our landings on bars and vault and hopefully get a competitive team score for a final boost in our regional qualifying score.

I felt like we had a slow start on our first two events tonight. The scores were tight and vault was still our weak event. I was happy with how we performed on floor and beam. We scored a season high on beam and it was nice to finish the meet strong. If we would have had more momentum earlier I feel we would have had a better chance to beat Minnesota.

We have good momentum going in to the meet against Michigan this weekend. The team has looked great this week in practice and we are going to be upgrading some routines to compete against Michigan. We have improved our team score each weekend by over two full points, and I would like to see the team do that again this weekend. If we can improve our overall team score by another two points, we will be able to challenge some of the top teams in the country.

In gymnastics, knowing you can count on a 9.8-plus in a routine every meet is very important. She is averaging over a 9.8 on bars this season and has anchored that event for us all year. That will be a tough spot to fill.

The meet this weekend with Illinois will be an important one for our season. It is our senior meet and our last home competition of the year. This group of seniors is very special to me. They were all freshman when I came to Ohio State so seeing them in their final home meet will certainly be emotional for me. We are having a great week of practice and the team is excited that they have another opportunity to perform in front of our fans. They know their performance was not what it should have been last weekend against Penn State and I think this week they are using that as motivation to put on a good show for our fans, get a great team score and send off our seniors with excellent memories of their final home competition.

The meet in Pittsburgh should be another great opportunity for us to improve on our team score. Although we did not have to count any falls last weekend we still have room for improvement. This team has really matured during the first half of the season. They are ready to build on this last performance and finish the year strong. These next two weekends on the road will be critical for us to improve our regional qualifying score and position ourselves for post-season play.