Competing as an all-arounder for the first time in her four-year career, Northern Illinois senior Natalie Blum won three events, including the all-around, to lead the Huskies to a season-opening victory over Wisconsin-La Crosse, 188.450-174.300 Sunday at the Convocation Center.
Blum was added to the Huskies' balance beam line-up after warm-ups when fellow senior Rachel Adams hurt her ankle and could not go in any of her three events. Blum responded by winning the vault and floor exercise with scores of 9.625 and 9.700, respectively, taking second place on the uneven parallel bars with a 9.525 and placing third on balance beam by scoring 9.600 in her first ever attempt on the apparatus.
"Natalie Blum did an awesome job - she had just a great meet," said NIU coach Mark Sontag, who entered his 11th season at the helm of the Huskie program in 2010. "She has not been an all-arounder for us but she went up on the beam for the first time in competition and did a great job. There were quite a few people that had to step in and make things happen that weren't expecting to. It was a little bit unusual but that's part of what we do. I tell everyone they have to be ready to go in every meet and they did that."
The Huskies already were competing without 2009 MAC Gymnast of the Year Holly Reichard, who is week-to-week with a foot injury, when Adams went down.
"I think we handled it really well," said Sontag of the late changes. "We were able to prevent a real deep slide [in scoring] and keep a decent score and give us something we can build on going into MAC. I see a lot of areas we are going to be working on and making improvements to increase the base score. We are going to continue to get people into the line-up and build from there."
NIU sophomore Ashley Guerra and junior Jessica Watanbe won the uneven parallel bars and balance beam competitions, respectively, with scores of 9.725 and 9.775. Guerra also took second on the beam with a 9.625. In her collegiate debut, freshman Natalie Sutter took second on the floor exercise (9.500) and on vault (9.425).
"We had all kinds of people doing their `first' events," Sontag said. "Natalie Sutter came up and did a great job as a freshman in her first meet and handled the pressure very well. The first meet is always a struggle because we haven't been in front of the judges. You always get jitters but I think we handled it well"
