The 2021 gymnastics National 

Championship came down to the 
very last routine of the meet. Junior 
Abby Heiskell stared down the beam 
as she mounted it. As she performed 
her routine, she completed each skill 
with an intention to do it perfectly, 
a lesson Michigan coach Bev Ploc-
ki has drilled into the mind of her 
gymnasts all season. Heiskell showed 
no ounce of doubt in any of her skills, 
and when she finished the routine 
with a stuck dismount, she proved 
that she was capable of being there 
for her team in the moment it needed 
it most.

Heiskell, joined by her teammates, 

could not peel their eyes from the 
scoreboard, and neither could Okla-
homa. Waiting for only junior Ol-
ivia Trautman’s score on floor and 
Heiskell’s score on beam, the teams 
sat tied at 198.0750. Trautman’s score 
came in at a 9.9375, leaving Heiskell’s 
routine to need a score of 9.8500 or 
better to win the meet for the Wol-
verines. 

When the number came in on the 

scoreboard, a 9.9250, the team, the 
coaches and the fans erupted. Mich-
igan would be the 2021 National 
Champion, the first Michigan wom-
en’s gymnastics team to ever win a 
National Championship. The team 
clinched a program record 198.2500 
in the competition of its life. 

“We’ve talked about this for so long, 

and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this 
is actually happening. Oh my gosh, 
the meet is over, and we’re nation-
al champions,’ ” sophomore Sierra 
Brooks said. “So much went into this, 
it’s so amazing seeing our hard work 
pay off.”

Michigan clinched the win, in the 

end, by securing the lead they held 
onto the entire meet. Coming into 
the Finals, Oklahoma was ranked 
first and Michigan second, based on 
the semifinal scores, but the Sooners 
were never given a chance to shine. 

Michigan started the meet on floor 

with six strong routines, all counted 
scores at a 9.9125 or higher. Junior 
Natalie Wojcik led the pack, scoring 
a 9.9500, landing all of her tumbling 
passes smoothly and without fault. 
Sophomore Gabby Wilson also post-

ed an impressive score of 9.9375, and 
the solid performance from the rest 
of her teammates landed the Wolver-
ines at a 49.6250, only 0.0250 points 
short of their record floor score 
yesterday. 

Oklahoma’s start on vault left them 

trailing by 0.0500 to start the meet, 
a deficit they never overcame. Utah 
had a solid bars rotation as well, 
scoring a 49.4250. Florida, who, prior 
to the weekend, was seeded to place 
first, had two falls on the beam, forc-
ing the team to count one extremely 
low score that they would never 
recover from. 

Michigan carried their energy to 

the vault for the second rotation, 
where it was not only seeded first 
in the country, but had the highest 
team start value of any team in the 
competition, all vaults starting with 
a 10.0 start value. Heiskell began the 
event, sticking her one and a half 
Yurchenko, forcing the judges to 
search for any deduction. Her vault, 
and its score of a 9.9750 started the 
consistency of the event, which was 
followed up by another stuck vault 
from Wojcik, earning herself a 9.9375 
and Brooks, who notched a 9.9750. 
The team’s vault performance extend-
ed their lead over the rest of the field 
even further, gaining a 0.1375 lead 
over Oklahoma at the halfway mark.

“(Vault’s) just been amazing,” 

Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “At 
the beginning of the year, we were 
doing big vaults, but we couldn’t get 
the landings, and it was a process. We 
absolutely peaked at the right time 
this year. … Right before the 
championship part of the 
season, we started 
being able to nail 
those 1.5s.”

Heiskell started 

off Michigan’s 
next rotation on 
bars with a stuck 
dismount. The 
Wolverines’ top 
scores of the 
rotation came 
from Brooks 
and junior Abby 
Brenner in her first 
competitive routine 
in months since 
hurting her ankle at 
the Big Five meet on 

Feb. 27. Their clutch performances 
earned both gymnasts a 9.9250, and 
kept Michigan with the same lead 
over Oklahoma as they had going 
into the event. 

This lead, though, was deceptively 

large. The Wolverines had to move 
to the beam, a nerve racking event to 
conclude a meet on, while the Soon-
ers ended on floor, whose scores were 
the highest of any event throughout 
the whole meet. Utah also trailed 
closely behind as they wrapped their 
meet up on the vault, another typi-
cally high scoring event.

“I just said to them: ‘Take a deep 

breath, exhale out all of the nervous 
energy and let’s just go do what we 
do, one routine at a time for six 
routines,’ ” Plocki said “We got this, 
breath in the confidence, be aggres-
sive. That’s what we wanted them to 
do, was just go do confident, aggres-
sive balance beam.”

Michigan’s rotation did not start as 

strong as they would have liked, with 
the highest of the first three routines 
coming from freshman Carly Bau-
man’s 9.8500. Wilson showed some 
wobbles, earning the lowest of the 
scores, a 9.7500. Meanwhile, Okla-
homa scored highly on the floor, 
all of which coming in at high 9.8s. 
However, Brooks turned the rotation 
around for the Wolverines. 

“Before I even went, I was on the 

verge of tears because I wanted it so 
bad for this team,” Brooks said. “I 
knew those routines were semi off, 
but I also trusted myself and the rest 
of the lineup, so I wanted to get out 

there and do my 

thing. I got on the beam and I just 
honestly approached it with as much 
confidence as I could ever have.”

Brooks performed her beam series 

perfectly, as well as the rest of her 
skills, all the way up to the stuck dis-
mount to score a 9.9625. The incred-
ibly high score made up for some of 
the points her former teammates had 
lost, but Wojcik and Heiskell still had 
to nail their routines for Michigan to 
have a shot at the win. 

Wojcik one-upped her teammate, 

sticking every skill just as solidly and 
scoring a 9.9875, the highest beam 
score of the day. Her score, along 
with the scores of the Sooners on 
floor, brought the meet to a tie before 
the very last routine of the competi-
tion. 

Heiskell handled the pressure with 

ease, flowing through each skill, 
punctuating her landings. Her skills 
on the beam, as well as her perfect-
ly stuck dismount off earned her a 
9.9250, well over the score the Wol-
verines needed to win the National 
Championship. 

“It’s very hard to describe how it 

feels,” Plocki said. “This is 32 years 
I’ve been waiting for this feeling … 
It’s just an unbelievable pride and 
just an admiration for what our team 
has been through and the sacrifices 
that they’ve made. I knew this was 
possible because, for the 
first time, they have 
belief in them-
selves.”

SAMI RUDD

Daily Sports Writer

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