By Jess Westendorf
The No. 17 Iowa women’s gymnastics team is set to compete at 4 p.m. Saturday at the NCAA regional in Champaign, Illinois, as the No. 3 seed.
Iowa will face off against five schools: No. 5 UCLA, No. 8 Oregon State, No. 19 Illinois, No. 22 Eastern Michigan, and No. 26 Ohio State.
“We are going into regional with the same goal we always have, to qualify for nationals and have Iowa seen as a perennial powerhouse,” head coach Larissa Libby said in a release. “We are going to have to be consistent in our performances and make sure we are hitting all of our routines, but I think we are very capable of doing all of these things to make it to the next round.”
Iowa was one of 36 teams nationally chosen to compete in the NCAA regionals this year and is one of a handful of teams capable of making a big splash at the competition.
Iowa qualified for regionals based on its regional qualifying score that the GymHawks consistently raised all season. Iowa had a regional qualifying score of 196.510 and ended ranked nationally at No. 17.
“Heading into regionals, we’re expecting to be on the podium this year,” senior Mollie Drenth said in a release. “We are expecting to go to nationals. Our focus for Saturday is just to hit all the routines and perform the best that we can.”
This is Iowa’s third-straight year qualifying for the regional. Iowa has appeared in some form at every NCAA regional since 2005, with three seasons of individual appearances and 10 team appearances.
The GymHawks will enter Saturday’s meet with a regular-season record of 15-6 and a third-place finish at the Big Ten Championships with a 196.725 score.
This season is one for the books for Iowa gymnastics. The squad has three gymnasts earning five Big Ten weekly honors, five gymnasts honored named to the All-Big Ten team, three gymnasts making the All-Championship team, and seven gymnasts making record-breaking scores in the program’s history.
All of those athletes will have their work cut out for them this weekend, however, with a many tough competitors making their way to Champaign.
“Our team has worked so hard this season,” senior Angel Metcalf said in a release. “We are most certainly a national competitor, and I would not underestimate us. We are really excited to make the trip to regionals. I think that this team is amazing and capable [of] so many things.”
