The Redbird gymnastics team came away victorious by the score of 190.850-187.800 against Lindenwood in their season opener on Friday in Horton Field House. Despite the win, ISU head coach Bob Conkling was not satisfied with his team’s performance.

“I don’t think we performed to the level we are capable of tonight,” he said.

ISU hit the road for the first time this season to take on Northern Illinois and fell to the Huskies, 192.175-192.050 Sunday in DeKalb. Conkling was pleased with the improvement from the first meet to the second, particularly in one specific event.

“There were some things we improved on in this meet, especially the floor exercise,” he said.

ISU vs. Lindenwood

The Redbirds’ top-two events in the meet were the vault and bars where they scored 48.350 and 48.675, respectively. ISU faltered on the final two events of the meet, tallying 46.800 on the beam and 47.025 on the floor.

“I thought our performance on the bars was great and [assistant coach] Steve [Avgerinos] has done a good job preparing our team in that event,” Conkling said. “I also thought we were pretty good on the vault, but we did not perform well on the beam and we looked like a different team from our first two events and that carried over onto the floor routines.”

Junior Jenna Bossle earned first place in the all-around with a 38.300 score, including first place on the vault (9.800), bars (9.875) and floor (9.725).

“Jenna really deserves that win and is probably our most improved gymnast from last year,” Conkling said. “She worked hard this summer to get herself in great shape, got stronger and it’s paid off, as she’s gotten better in every event. It doesn’t surprise me that she won the all-around tonight because of all that hard work she has put in.”

Sophomore Sami King finished second in the all-around with a score of 38.175, including first place on the balance beam with a 9.675 tally. Senior Tori Sarantakis earned third place honors in the all-around with a score of 37.900.

Antronio Vargas/Staff Photographer: Sophomore Sami King finished ISU’s gymnastics home opener in second-place all-around with a score of 38.175 on Friday at Horton Field House.

ISU vs. Northern Illinois

Despite coming up short against NIU in the final tally, the Redbirds earned a higher score than the Huskies on three out of the four events including the vault (48.750-48.250), bars (47.800-47.700) and floor (48.475-48.250). The balance beam (47.975-47.025) was the lone event where ISU tallied a lower score than the Huskies.

“You have to put out your best effort on all four events in every competition if the gymnasts want to have a successful season,” Conkling said. “This team is very talented, but they need to learn how to compete if they want to win.

This will be our focus during practices the next couple of weeks.”

King earned first place in the all-around with a score of 39.050, including second place on the floor exercise (9.750), first place on the beam (9.825) and second place on the bars (9.750). Senior Kim Genereux finished second in the all-around with a score of 38.350, including second place on the vault with a 9.775 tally and first place on the bars (9.825).

Junior Elise Gray earned first-place honors on the vault with a 9.825 score and senior Kimberly Caron won the floor exercise with a score of 9.825.

The Redbirds resume action at 2 p.m on Jan. 27 against Illinois-Chicago in the Horton Field House.