Coming off of its highest regular season score in nearly three calendar years, the ISU gymnastics team will head to DeKalb, Ill., to face Northern Illinois and Texas Women’s University in a tri-meet 1 p.m. Sunday.

The evening of Feb. 7 at Hilton Coliseum, Iowa State (2-4, 1-1 Big 12) tallied season-high marks on all four events en route to a 196.025-194.175 conference victory. Senior Camille Santerre-Gervais also tied an ISU record on bars with a score of 9.950 and set a personal record of 9.825 on the beam.

In the practices leading up to this weekend, Santerre-Gervais said her strategy for a repeat of last week’s performance is to just keep it loose.

“We all have cues that we work on every day, like on beam I’m always counting or playing music in my head,” Santerre-Gervais said. “It’s just little things like that to keep it light and not think about how I’m going to do each skill as it comes.”

Santerre-Gervais also noted that she is working on bringing the same game to the beam that she does to the bars.

“I’m just as focused on bars now as I have been all year, but it would be great if I could do the same type of thing on beam this weekend,” Santerre-Gervais said. “I get a little bit into my head sometimes on beam and I think that’s why I’m not as mentally strong there as I am on bars. It’s been hard, but last week I showed that I’m getting there.”

Caitlin Brown has also been a key contributor for Iowa State this season, setting new career-highs in the all-around event in four out of five meets. Brown, however, has only found herself on top of the proverbial podium once. She isn’t letting that discourage her, though.

“I honestly don’t even focus on my score, but I like to think that usually I’m in the running,” Brown said. “It’s motivating to know that you’re up near the top and that you’re doing well, but I don’t focus on my place. It’s like [head coach] Jay [Ronayne] always tells us: ‘Be ordinary, because if you do what you always do, you’ll be great.’”

ISU coach Jay Ronayne is not worried about wins and losses either. He said that nobody on the team focuses too intently on the overall record, but rather they strive for flawless skills.

“I don’t think about the record ever. Neither do any of the coaches, neither do the gymnasts,” Ronayne said. “What we all really value is the effort and technical perfection. If we go out there and everyone hits great routines, they stick all of the landings and we still lose, that definitely hurts. But if we take care of the technical aspects, well, the wins and losses will reflect that.”

Because the score is entirely up to the judges, Iowa State is shifting last week’s goal of “195, 196 or better” to something a little simpler: perform.

“We’re not going to be hung up on scores, it’s all about personal performance and what we can do technically correct,” Ronayne said. “The score will take care of itself, so we’ve really got to focus on the technical parts throughout … It’ll be like a chain: If something at the beginning of the chain is crap, we can’t expect to find gold at the other end.”